The Madness of July

by James Naughtie

  Flemyng asked the question that Paul was expecting. ‘What does the notebook tell us?’

  ‘Quite a bit,’ said the policeman, and smiled.

  There was a pause. Gwilym looked to be imagining the scene in the back of the van with no windows, transporting a stiffening corpse wrapped in blankets despite the heat, through the streets of London to a hotel where a second team of dark servants in overalls would be holding open a service lift, perhaps forming another bearer party and clearing the way to whisk it upstairs to its new resting place. He was sitting quite still, with his head at an artificial angle looking straight ahead, and Flemyng caught the shake in both hands.

  ‘I made arrangements, I should say right now, for the notebook to be given to me. In other words, it was not taken to Kensington police station with the other personal effects. That seemed the obvious course in the circumstances. It will not appear on the list of items found at the scene. Just like his real passport.’

  For a fair man, Paul’s face had taken on a strangely dark look. His forehead was lined, his short hair ruffled as if he had been wakened from a deep sleep. ‘Tell us, Jarrod. I should perhaps warn you both’ – a gesture to Flemyng and Gwilym – ‘that there are some disturbing entries in that notebook.’

  Flemyng waited.

  ‘For example, in relation to one senior civil servant in particular. His name and private office number. All underlined. He has a page of the notebook to himself.’

  Looking miserable, he said, ‘Tom Brieve.’

  Another heaving sigh from Gwilym, who was producing a chorus of groans while lighting another cigarette. Flemyng had never seen him smoke, and such was the surprise of it that it seemed as if Gwilym was now operating in another dimension.

  ‘Brieve.’ Flemyng’s voice was flat and gave no hint as to whether he was surprised or not.

  Paul said, ‘I’ve spoken to Tom. He’ll soon be on his way to Paris for the conference, with pretty well everyone in this whole place. But not until the morning. He has a dinner tonight, apparently.’ He then swept his hand high. ‘He has explained to me,’ this with a careful glance around the room, taking in everyone, ‘that a call did come into his office from a man who called himself Manson. His real name, as we know. One of Tom’s secretaries took the message. Manson wanted to have a conversation, and mentioned the name of a congressman in Washington whom Tom knows, saying he was the conduit who had suggested the call. Didn’t say what he wanted to talk about.

  ‘I should say here and now that with some effort we contacted the congressman in question last evening and he knows nothing of Manson, nor of the supposed introduction to Tom Brieve, and is as mystified as we are. It was a tale Manson told for his own purposes. I need hardly say that the congressman is neither aware that Manson is dead, nor of the nature of our interest. He will doubtless have forgotten it all by now. Let’s hope so. The boys in the Washington embassy handled it well.’ As always with Paul, praise where it was deserved.

  ‘The long and the short of it is this. He wanted to speak to Tom Brieve himself, but the conversation didn’t take place. Tom’s secretary told Manson to ring back the next day, put a brief note on Tom’s daily list and says he thought no more of it. Put it out of his mind. And, of course, Manson didn’t get in touch again.’

  ‘For reasons we know,’ said Gwilym, with another sigh.

  Paul was on his feet, a straight-backed figure beside the high white marble fireplace, his hand resting on the mantel. ‘So there we have it. We know who he was.’

  Gwilym said with relish, ‘A spy.’

  Paul ignored him, and resumed.

  ‘He was proposing to speak to an official in the most important office in this government, had got himself into parliament for reasons we don’t understand, and ended up dead in a cupboard, apparently having taken too many drugs. And as to the question why, we don’t have a sliver of an answer. Except that we can assume he wasn’t here on holiday.’

  ‘Or for the good of his health, you might say,’ said Gwilym. Paul breathed hard.

  ‘Jarrod, thank you. Let us know when you learn more.’

  As Osterley departed, Paul turned to face the others. Flemyng was in front of him, Gwilym still in his chair by the window.

  Paul went back to the desk and perched on one of its corners, one foot just touching the floor. ‘Will, this is the oddest business I have ever known. Grisly, dangerous, you name it. Politically – explosive, though it’s not a word I like. As I indicated yesterday, I need you to help in any way you can. And since then, as we have heard, it has taken another nasty turn, towards Brieve’s office. You have to pitch in, full tilt.’

  ‘We’re in it up to our necks,’ put in Gwilym.

  Paul ignored this, and carried on. ‘Your boss won’t know, Will. He’s away anyway. No one, not your colleagues, not your old friends elsewhere – Gwilym here, that’s all. As I told you before, not another soul in this building, from the highest to the lowest. I’ll tell you what I can.

  ‘The body’s the least of it.’

  Flemyng moved quickly to pin him down. ‘What do you mean by help, exactly?’ he said. ‘And pitching in?’ He pulled himself up and, Gwilym also having risen, joined them at the desk, straightening his jacket as he did so.

  ‘As I said last night, I want you to delve into your past a bit, wherever it might take you. I don’t need to know all the details. But I’ll protect you if you need that,’ Paul told him.

  He did also offer a smile. Gwilym didn’t. He was still trembling, and had left several cigarette ends in a heavy ashtray beside his chair. He was watching Flemyng closely, head cocked to one side in a manner that looked affectionate.

  Paul said, ‘We don’t exactly look like the Three Musketeers, do we?’ That did bring a flicker of a grin from Gwilym. ‘But we’re going into battle, I suppose, together.’

  At this, Gwilym produced a moment of unintended and touching comedy. He stood to attention, as if in response to a command, his shirt ballooning out of his trousers and his tie at half-mast. He pushed a hand through his hair, stirring up the blond thatch. ‘Come on, Will,’ he said, raising both arms like a nervous conductor.

  For Flemyng, the minute or so that followed this display of innocence and supplication had the intensity of some vision come upon him in the night, vivid enough so that the shapes and colours of the faces and places that he saw were imprinted on his mind, where they would remain, clear and seductive, through the days that lay ahead. Paul understood that he felt the pull of the old game with Sam and the others; understood all the confidences they would share and the secrets they would have to keep. Flemyng was thinking, too, of Lucy hunched over a letter that was taking her into the dark heart of his trade, and a picture of a brother in happier days flashed on his mind, unprompted. Then home, where he was bound that night.

  ‘Paul,’ he said. ‘You know that I’m due to go north later. Last flight to Edinburgh. I’ve got a little fishing planned at home, then the speech in St Andrews on Sunday. Should I go? I’ve got today, can make some progress first.’

  Paul said, ‘Go. That’s where you think best. It’s your brain I need, Will, not your swordstick. Prowl around today, talk, then take yourself home. We’ll speak tomorrow and meet here again late on Sunday, if that suits, take it from there. Things will have moved on by then. No doubt you will have had some conversations of your own.’

  Flemyng was with him and they locked eyes.

  ‘Get into this, as best you can. I’ll talk to Tom Brieve again. You’ll bump into all the others who’re involved in bits of the business, but they’re not to know. The police will have to go through the usual stuff, although it will be as discreet as they can make it. Let them do their own thing. We’re going to have to make the connections that may be beyond them.

  ‘That I hope are beyond them, I should say.’

  Flemyng, who’d been managing his own fear for days, recognized in Paul the same determination to keep panic at bay, the effort to hold the temperat
ure down, despite everything.

  ‘Better than being a minister, any day,’ said Gwilym, managing a laugh at last.

  ‘Mind you, you’ll have to carry on as normal,’ Paul said, having got up and moved back to the fireplace. ‘What you’re doing for me mustn’t show.’ Flemyng saw that the big clock on the mantel was signalling that it was nearly noon, its long filigreed hands almost on top of one another. In a moment there would be a chime to mark the height of the mad day, and from over the road they’d hear the deep boom of Big Ben counting them into the afternoon.

  ‘I have plans for this afternoon that may help,’ he offered.

  Paul returned his smile with a nod of relief.

  ‘Will. Thank you. And it’s just like the old days. As I say, no one will know.’

  Flemyng smiled at that. They shook hands, not without a little awkwardness, because Gwilym was getting into the swing of the adventure and seemed transformed. He did up his tie, stood straight, and for one brief moment seemed on a high. They broke up.

  Flemyng knew what Paul wanted him to do. He walked to the courtyard outside his office, paused for a few minutes’ thought, then went upstairs to his desk and asked to be left alone, even by Lucy. On his private line, he dialled the number of Abel’s home in New York.

  10

  In Washington, Maria had spent the night on the edge of sleep, mostly awake. The figure of Joe seemed to be in the room and she felt she could have touched him, the playboy who conjured up moments of intensity that brought tears to the surface. He teased her, then drifted away. When the light did come and the phantom was gone, there was no chance of rest, and she set to work. She sent a short, careful message to Jackson Wherry about Abel, and learned that he would be welcome at dinner that evening in London. ‘Peter Lehman’ would have a place at a good table.

  ‘Time’s short, but we’ll play this for as long as we can,’ said Wherry when he called. ‘Old ways are best.’

  Maria’s dark night had lifted. Abel would touch down soon, and set to work. She would be at her desk, and therefore by his side. Until then she had nearly two hours. She cooked a little breakfast, and heard Leila stirring in the bedroom. She had come to Maria very late, after Abel had gone. ‘Let’s go out, before the day begins.’

  They took their bikes and headed west. After about fifteen minutes they chained them up at the canal and set off, occasionally hand in hand, their faces raised to a freshening wind.

  They lived a life together that couldn’t be admitted, and few people in the city were trusted to share the knowledge. Even with some close friends, she deceived. In all her store of secrets, one of the richest hoards in a city where they were hidden all around, there was nothing that she wished more to release and let go. But the consequence of that hard discipline and the careful years they had shared was that their trust in each other, when they spoke of their work, was absolute. Neither had to enter into negotiation about the boundaries.

  As they walked along the rough bike trail on the line of the old Chesapeake and Ohio canal below Georgetown, the Potomac sliding past them very slowly going the other way, Maria spoke of Joe. He’d seemed indestructible, a survivor who proved as much by spending most of his time living on the edge. Maria had pulled him back from the chasm a few times, and although she had always harboured the knowledge that it was bound to happen again, she had held on to the illusion that his old habits – in truth, the one habit – had been discarded.

  He’d spent long months in clinics in Arizona and Montana, the empty places where you can disappear. ‘The word from Miami was that he was clean. I believed it,’ she said.

  She thought of him as a tree-dwelling creature springing from branch to branch, scampering from the forest floor to the highest tops in easy bounds, lying quiet for a while in the shade and then making a spectacular jump into the sunlight. He was never still for long, always watching and ready for the next move. He’d lived high in Miami, getting his energy from Maria’s messages which assured him that his networks matched her highest hopes and that he would always be one of her best boys.

  Leila understood some of Maria’s connections to the apparatus of which her own office at State was a distant part, although there were almost no names that she would recognize. Abel’s was one; Joe’s was not. Fat Zak Annan and Barney Eustace, the short and the tall, appeared at the house from time to time as sentries come in the night to protect the citadel, and were familiar shadows. Annan always chose a corner chair from which he seemed to fill the room; Eustace was ever on the move, a thin figure who could slip through a doorway almost unseen. They were protectors of Maria’s secrets, and now she was talking about Joe. She said he represented the wildness that they all had within them, and never wanted to lose.

  ‘I cared for him so much. He tried it on with me more than once. An experiment. Wanted to see if I might melt, knowing all along that I wouldn’t. We laughed about it a lot in the end.’ Her voice was quiet, though she was enjoying the memory.

  Leila asked, ‘How did he die?’ Straight out.

  ‘Drugs, for sure. Cops have no doubt.’ Maria held her hands like scales of justice and weighed them back and forth. ‘The embassy’s waiting for the autopsy report from the Brits. We’ll do our own in good time, when Joe’s handed over. Cold, so cold.’

  She paused. ‘But I need to know if he talked to anyone about things that should never have been spoken of, and I’ll never be able to ask him.’

  Maria stopped by a bench hewn out of a wide tree trunk and sat down. ‘The thing is, they found a syringe beside him.’

  Leila sensed her lover’s mystification. ‘You said he had an old habit.’

  Maria was watching the water. ‘No. There was someone with him, must have been.’

  Leila was used to waiting in such conversations. When they happened, which was not often, they brought a new intimacy with them, and demanded special trust. She placed a hand on Maria’s shoulder.

  ‘I knew something about Joe that, through all the bad times, never changed. And I know it can’t have been any different yesterday, on his last day on this earth. ’Course, I told Abel, too.’

  Leila waited.

  ‘Last thing I told him before he flew last night, before you came home. Joe couldn’t take needles. So he was with someone, near the end. In his hotel, where they found him. Why?’

  Leila said, ‘Unless it was planted afterwards.’

  Maria nodded. ‘Sure. Don’t I know it.’

  Once more she felt the distance to London yawning in front of her, and her inability to feel the atmosphere from far away: Abel’s eyes, the tilt of Wherry’s quizzical expression, the gossip among friends in their own shadows. With Joe dead, and the heavy mechanism of formal investigation engaged, the careful bits of cover being put into place, she knew the story was slipping from her grasp. It was going to be a long morning before Abel got back to her.

  But he would be calling, that was sure. She stood up to put her hand in Leila’s. ‘Let’s take a quick walk. I need to be home.’

  They turned their faces to the sun and decided without a word to enjoy a few minutes of silence.

  *

  ‘My brother called New York,’ Abel said, first of all, when he spoke to Maria from London. It was lunchtime for him; Washington was getting to the office. ‘Will, I mean. Hannah hasn’t spoken to him for nearly a year. She told him I was in DC; didn’t know about London when he rang.’ He could offer no more, and told her that he would choose the best moment to make contact. It would be later in the day; didn’t want to call Flemyng in his office.

  ‘How are things between you?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Much the same. Distant. No special reason, as you know. Just a drifting apart that neither of us wanted, but it happened all the same. Maybe we could never play the same game too close together. There was never a crisis, but neither of us has made the move. It’s sad. For him, too.’

  ‘Sure,’ Maria said, aware of Abel’s hesitation, and didn’t push him. She had no w
ish to compound his awkwardness and weigh him down.

  To business. Maria said he was expected at the Wherry home for dinner at eight – ‘Jackson’s a trouper, always was’ – and rang off to settle down for the wait. In that moment of calm, when everything seemed to stop, she felt as if an engine were about to kick into life and set events on the move, remembering that it was always like this when the first surprise came along. Will Flemyng, drawn in already.

  For her part, she called Annan and Eustace to tell them to be on hand for the evening, at home with her, and to clear the weekend. One of them, at least, might have to travel. ‘It will break in the next three days. I know it.’

  She hailed a cruising cab on the corner of South Capitol Street, rolled down the window to let the breeze blow through, and reached 16th Street in a few minutes. She walked two blocks to her office, in a building that gave no hint of its government status, and there extracted a buff folder from her personal safe. She took out four thick files and laid them on her desk. Opening the first, she looked at the title page: William Benedict Flemyng, born 5 November, 1930.

  *

  Flemyng had four hours before his rendezvous with Sam, and told Lucy that the office wouldn’t see him in that time. She could make any excuse she chose: he didn’t mind the paper piling up. He’d be going to Scotland as planned, so Lawrence could pick him up at seven to go home for a quick goodbye, then on to the airport. He assumed Lucy was surprised, but gave no sign. When he left, she set about preparing the red box that she intended to send after him to Scotland. It would be looked at by Sunday night, or else.

  Two other projects were going to occupy her afternoon. She had a plan to crack the story of the Washington embassy, which Flemyng had reported from his conversation at the opera house, and she knew where to start. If Dennis had blown a gasket at the news that he was being dumped again, she had a friend on the bridge of that ship in Paris who would have the story. Second, she had a date of her own with the personnel department, which could be brought forward to coincide with Flemyng’s absence if they had a gap that afternoon. Neat.