The Crocus List

by Gavin Lyall

  "I shouldn't think so, but-"

  "They always do it in films."

  "You're not a public figure, nobody knows your voice. What did theysay?'

  "They wanted more details and I said it was a murder, dammit, and why didn't they do something about it, and he said 'Another of those,' and… well, theymust do something. Mustn't they?"

  "It's Saturday night, they probably get a lot of hoax calls from drunks." Maxim wished he had made the call himself, even if George had had to look up and dial the number for him. But the police wouldhave to react -wouldn't they?

  George was in no mood to hang around: he wanted to be back in the safety-illusory though it might be-of the big city, with a drink in his hand. He had some memory of having promised God to give up drinking, but God hadn't turned the clock back, so that didn't count any more. He skimmed Oxford on the bypass and settled to a steady seventy mph on the M40.

  As London got nearer, his confidence trickled back. "Do you think they got anything out of her?" he asked.

  "Names? No; she wouldn't commit suicideafter talking. But we didn't get them either."

  The thought damped George down for a few miles; then he asked: "How are the eyes?"

  "Getting better."

  "Chilli-a new weapon, for them."

  Maxim just grunted. He was assuming that the spice had come from Miss Tuckey's kitchen, a makeshift to arm 'Praeger' while the others went to get a van or just new instructions, since they wouldn't have planned on removing a body. On leaving her dead, yes, but a whiff from a cyanide gun would have brought an automatic verdict of heart failure on a stout, elderly smoker.

  The chilli also meant that Praeger had been just a wire man, with ordersnot to kill anybody who came at him, just blind them and run. That seemed obvious, now hehad had time to think. He hoped George wasn't thinking the same thought.

  But George was looking further forward. "With her background, it'll be referred to Special Branch and Five… and that fiddled telephone… and Praeger without any background-we should have left his wallet, but they'll trace something about him anyway-and then we can admit we went to see her -once-and what we talked about, and there we are."

  "It'll all blow wide open-in a very narrow, quiet way." Maxim was fairly familiar with Whitehall by now.

  "Just so. Even the present Cabinet won't want to admit it's had right-wing desperadoes running around interrupting the even tenor of its betrayals. No, there are Ways and Means, and whether by way or by mean, those persons will be traced and told to cease and desist. Or be charged with Barling's murder. It must go that way-mustn't it?"

  Only it didn't. The local police had had a busy evening, with an exceptional number of hoax calls that led them to non-existent road accidents, drunken brawls and even-a touch that showed a nice appreciation of British susceptibilities-a rabid dog on the loose. George's murder call had sounded the phoniest of the lot; it had certainly been the most amateurish. A single policeman finally arrived to try the doors-all locked-and ask if the neighbours had heard anything suspicious. They hadn't. Not until Miss Tuckey had missed next morning's service did a neighbour with a key go in to see if she was all right.

  By then the house was tidy-and empty. Miss Tuckey's car was gone, and so were some of her clothes and suitcases. She did go away a lot, but normally told somebody first, so it was odd. Eventually the police were called back, but they found nothing. The telephone was in one piece, there were no bloodstains, no signs of what they still call 'foul play' as if somebody had been kicked behind the referee's back. There might have been a rug and a sheet missing from the bedroom, a picture gone from the wall, an incomplete rack of spice jars. But imperfection and incompleteness are normalcy; sheets get torn, rugs stained and sent for cleaning, pictures need reframing, spice jars break on stone floors. The police agreed that her disappearance was odd, even suspicious, but oddness and suspicion are on every breath a policeman takes-and meanwhile, their offices are stacked with files of unquestionably real and still unsolved crimes. So the vicar signed a missing person report to be added to the dozens of others filed that day all over the country and that, until something else happened, would be that.

  16

  "The Army ought to start asking questions when she doesn't turn up for the next course at the Fort," George said hopefully. "And she must have relatives and friends. With her special backgroundsomebody must get suspicious. And if not, I'll see if -I can think of an excuse to try and contact her myself."

  "If the bodies never turn up," Maxim said, "and I assume they won't, I can't think what else there is to find."

  It was like a Monday at a football club, with Saturday's umpteen-nil defeat to be analysed, and an injury list that promised worse to come. Knowing George despised soccer, Maxim didn't mention the thought, and in any case, George's feelings were more complex than his own. No evidence of two deaths meant no evidence of his involvement in them. In saving themselves, the Bravoes had saved George as well, although only from the consequences, not the horror. So perhaps God had turned the clock back, in a very God-like way. It wasn't, George felt, quite enough for him to renew any promises about alcohol.

  Maxim just wanted to know where the battle lines now stood so that they could make new plans.

  "I could try going back to the Steering Committee," he said, "and simply tell them what's happened. You needn't be mentioned; all my own work."

  "I know you mean that, Harry," George sighed. "But as you say, what's to be found? Certainly nothing that proves a conspiracy. You'd simply be committing suicide: you're either a killer or some fruitcake who thinks he's a killer, and neither wanted in today's modern Army, thank you." He glanced to see how Maxim had taken the word 'killer', but saw only the usual polite smile.

  Georgelifted a stack of the day's and Sunday's papers -none mentioned Miss Tuckey-and dropped them on the floor. "All right. Concentrate on the second man at the Abbey: call him Person Y. Where are we?"

  Maxim opened his briefcase on the desk. "I got the photographs."

  "Printed already? That's quick."

  "Friends. They also looked at the bug from her phone. It's a new model, they were quite excited. And it was most likely picking us up in her room, as well as calls."

  George was sifting through the snapshot-sized photographs Maxim had taken, identifying portraits of several people concerned with Resistance or Intelligence, and mostly now dead. Then he turned to the big original of the man Maxim remembered from the Abbey. It was actually of two men, smiling into the camera against a chunky city skyline. And now it was out of its glass frame, he could make out a faded signature at the bottom: Jay Keyserling, St Louis, 1968.

  "Good God, we're home and dry."

  Maxim shook his head. "Wrong man. We want the other one. "

  "How d'you know?" George peered closer. Of the two men, one was, in indefinable but unmistakable details, American; the other, by seeming 'normal', was clearly British. The American was wearing a lapel badge, big enough for his own name and some other word. George, who didn't need glasses (as he kept telling people), reached for his magnifying glass.

  "That's Keyserling,"Maxim said. "The other word's CCOAC."

  "Never heard of it." George glared at the picture. The Briton would, presumably, have also been issued with a name-badge, but with a British horror of self-advertisement had taken it off the moment he could. Blast his idiot Britishness.

  "Some sort of business convention, fairly respectable -if you can have such a thing," he ruminated. The well-fitting lightweight suits were too expensive for academicsyet too fashionable for government officials, and the ties were soberly striped. "In Saint Lewis, 1968."

  "Is that how you pronounce it?" Maxim was surprised, having spent much of his life listening to various versions of what most people called 'The S'n Looey Blues'.

  "Yes, and loud and clear on the Saint or they'll give you a ticket for Cincinnati, and it could be months before your next of kin were informed." He ruminated a while longer. "You'r
e sure this man, the Brit -?"

  "As sure as I can be. He's younger, there, but I'd think that man would be around fifty now. About right."

  "So we've got an identification on the wrong man, but it's the only path through the mire. Can you follow it up? He's probably a prosperous American businessman, prosperous enough to go to international conventions: try all the American and international reference books in our library, then the London Library. You're not a member, are you? I'll give them a tinkle. But don't approach their embassy yet…

  "Of course," he added, "our Brit may not have known Miss Tuckey at all, since Keyserlingsigned this photo to her."

  "Why not just send a picture of himself? Keyserlinglooks as if he could afford it. I think the Brit belongs, somehow."

  "Yes… and I suppose, if the picture wasn't printed until after he'd gone home, Keyserlingwould send it anyway. So, action this day."

  "Mind you," Maxim said, "I could go back to her cottage and have a second snoop, taking my time. There might be-"

  "Harry, you are not to go near that cottage, not eventhink of going near it-and I can read your thoughts by now. They are a hell-broth of ideas to provoke coronaries and hair loss in middle-aged civil servants. Why don't you take up a hobby with a purely personal risk, like parachuting… Ah, sorry." He had forgotten Maxim's Special Air Service background.

  "I've done thirty-two jumps and never quite got over the feeling that it would be better to arrive by chauffeur-driven Rolls."

  "I thought it was supposed to be very exhilarating, once the 'chute opened. "

  "It is," Maxim agreed. "If you think of the only alternative."

  Keyserling, Jay Pedersen, banker; b. Jefferson City Miss., Mar 1 1912; s. Frank Elmer and Ingrid… Maxim copied it all out, just in case, but without much hope because it ended: d. Jan 7 1979.

  "So he was only sixty-six when God called in the loan," George commented, reading through it. "It's that Midwestern winter as does it; I was there in February once, I nearly turned up my toes then except they'd have snapped off… still, it's nice to have a banker dying early." George's brother-in-law banked. "Local bank, Navy commission in the war, Pacific, executive at First Chicago, back to home state at St Louis, rising to President of Merchants and Trappers (State) Bank, a pillar of the Bogie Club, the Board of Civic Progress and the Episcopalian Church… He seems about as straightforward a citizen as ever foreclosed on a widow and fifteen orphans, not a hint of creepy-crawliness, no European connections, not even any gaps." George was adept at reading entries in directories, official lists and Who's Whos from many countries which tried to skip the most interesting parts of a subject's life. "Good Lord, he wrote books, too: Foreign Debt: A Pauper's Promise, not exactly a snappy title, but it sounds as if he saw something the New York banks didn't, and The Credit of Faith."

  "That one was published over here, Parados Press, 1965. They dug up an old catalogue reference to it: it seems to be that honest banking practice and churchgoing come to the same thing, ungodly Marxism leads to phoney exchange rates. "

  "You're paraphrasing, I assume. Well, well-a banker who can read and write, yet. I suppose the Midwest would be where you might still find one. And it doesrieup: I uncovered CCOAC in your absence."

  He had eventually decided to ask Security's registry and its computers for a trace, muddling the trail by getting a colleague to send the request for him and burying it in alist of acronyms, as if they had been collected over a period of time. The prompt reply showed just how little Security now had to do: CCOAC translated as Churchgoers Concerned About Communism, a one-off conference held in May 1968. Initial funding had come from local businessmen, and delegates-mostly businessmen themselves-from a dozen countries had paid their own air fares and hotel bills.

  "But claimed it off tax later, no doubt," George said sourly.

  The conference had no covert political purpose, Security believed, even if one presidential and several senatorial hopefuls had demonstrated their statesmanliness from the platform.

  "In other words," George interpreted, "they couldn't trace any CIA funding. But there probably wasn't any; in the Midwest you wouldn't need it. But where does it get us? This CCOAC makes it more likely that Person Ywas involved in the things we think he was involved in, but…"

  "We still don't know who he is."

  "Quite, and exactly. Probably a British businessman with enough money to go romping off to America on some tax-deductible crusade-heavens, you weren't anybody in the Sixties if you couldn't do that twice a year."

  "We also know he's a churchgoer, or was then. Miss Tuckey was involved in church work. Person X at the Abbey was dressed as a cleric…"

  "Whatare you suggesting?"

  "Nothing. Or… maybe there's a crusade going on, as you said. Believers make good soldiers. Miss Tuckey said they made good agents. Does Security have a list of British delegates to CCOAC?"

  "No. This is all they had on it. Why bother? These people certainly weren't on Moscow's payroll." He brooded, glanced at his wristwatch, then poured more coffee from a big silver-plated flask which he had installed himself. The room, which looked over the Embankment side of the building, was a mix of his own and Civil Service furnishings. The desk and carpet were his badges of rank and he hadn't presumed, nor even thought, to change them. But the drinks cabinet, the expensive deskchair-"A civil servant's only assets are the strength of his back and backside; I am not having my career foreshortened by Her Majesty's fiscal indifference to spinal problems"-and the bits and pieces on the desk were George's imports. They included an ugly marble pen-stand, presented by the retiring Prime Minister, which George never used but displayed as proud evidence of the biggest mistake a civil servant can achieve: becoming too identified with a political figure.

  He stared moodily at the photograph, at the thin face with its moustache and big ears smiling out at an unimaginable future. Or had it been so unimaginable? Was Person Yeven then planning to take up secret arms against a sea of predictable troubles? No, it was just a photograph. But-"Could this man have done something to stop you reaching Person X? You must have turned your back on him."

  "I thought he was a policeman."

  "Quite. But could he have tried something?"

  "That's what the Committee couldn't swallow."

  "I can see their point. And Person X could have taken a shot at you."

  "He'd dropped his rifle in the Abbey."

  "He could have had a pistol as well: sensible precaution. Or really have thrown that grenade at you."

  "Not a chance. I was covering him with-"

  "Harry, he was notexpecting to meet a superman like you. My point is, neither of them even tried. X just shouted something about you getting hurt. If that wasn't a threat, it was a Jolly Decent Thing To Do, seeing as how he was about to blow himself up. You see what I'm getting at? They wanted to kill one person in the Abbey, to shock everybody, but do as little more damage as possible."

  He clasped his hands in among his chins and glowered at the desk top. Behind him, the rain trickling down the window made wavery verticals behind the strict horizontals of the Venetian blind. "There must be a list of CCOAC delegates somewhere in St Louis. I'll think what I can do about that; I don't want to go back to Security, or through Six… when you come down to it, how do weknow some of the Old Guard in those places aren't involved in thisbloody attempt to run the country from the shadows? 1 don't like the government we've got, but nobody voted for men with rifles in the Abbey." He sat very still and spoke with quiet ferocity."And they've let the Bravoes in, given them a potential scandal that… I don't know what. But we're a small country, now: we can't afford big mistakes."

  Maxim was smiling and nodding politely. "Anybody could be involved. Going to Miss Tuckey was a risk, but-"

  "D'you think she…?"

  "Very much doubt it. She was too obvious, with her lectures and books-and what access did she have? No official standing. Probably a few friends in high places, but it would be better to re
cruit them instead. No, I think she thought she could guess at somebody who might be involved-like Person Y-but nothing more."

  "Unless it was cover."

  "Double cover."

  "I know: rhinestones over amethysts over diamonds." George had lapsed into determined gloom. "That way, you end by staring through a telescope poked up your own-"

  "The most she might have done," Maxim said soothingly, "would be to give them training in techniques. She couldn't have been supplying Russian weapons, typewriter, unlisted phone numbers-oh, were those two Second Secretaries on the No-go-Alone List?"

  There was, had to be, a discreet list circulated naming those (mainly) Soviet Bloc officials in London with whom it washighly inadvisable to have a solo drink or dinner. Maxim hadn't seen an update of the list since leaving Number 10.

  "They were on it," George grunted.

  "How would she get hold of the KGB's local order of battle? No, whoever gave them the kit could give them the training to go with it. These people have got good contacts-but with whom?"

  "You're getting grammatical." George sat looking like a frog who has no idea where his next fly is corning from.

  "All right. You get back to the Playforceofficeand look busy. I'll think whether I have any cousins in St Louis."

  Maxim got slowly to his feet, his thoughtful face sending a shiver through George, because that look usually meant he might be going todo something. "You took a recording of the TV replay at the Abbey, didn't you?"

  "It was you working that blasted machine."

  "Can I come back with you and play it over-or borrow it?" On Saturday, Maxim had moved back into Wellington Barracks; he was supposed to be looking for a new flat to go with his London posting.

  "Of course. I've got a meeting at four, should be through by half five."

  Maxim half turned away, then decided he'd better say his piece anyway. "Would you mind if I followed you back -just to try and see if anybody else is trying to? I'm not very good at that sort of thing, but… one thing we do know is that the Bravoes know we're involved. I mean we George Harbinger and Harry Maxim."