To Run a Little Faster

by John Gardner

  The driver, together with the man who had been my guard in the van, was standing behind Hensman. At the rear I could see a third fellow, blond like a Norwegian, with big features and hands like hams. Probably Quorn.

  ‘Michael, we don’t need them at the moment, do we?’ The one they called Peter inclined his head towards the three roughs.

  ‘I don’t think friend Darrell is going to run anywhere,’ Hensman’s eyes twinkled, almost friendly, amused that his secret was out.

  ‘Go and get something to eat,’ Peter commanded the trio. ‘Quorn’ll arrange it.’ They nodded in a sort of dumb obedience, turning and trooping off down the passage towards the kitchen.

  ‘They live like pigs,’ said Peter. ‘Like swine.’

  ‘I’ve known cleaner swine.’ The woman was lighting a cigarette, blowing the smoke down her nose, extinguishing the match with a little twist of her fingers. ‘I’ll get you some coffee. There is good coffee here.’ She clumped off towards the kitchen after the men.

  Hensman had now come right into the room. I couldn’t take my eyes from him, taking in the small things, a twist of greying hair on his chest, visible in the open neck of his shirt, a large gold ring circling the middle finger of his right hand, and a tiny scar, a white blob, to the left of his mouth, which had never shown up in the photographs.

  ‘I don’t look too bad for a drowned man, no?’ He had a perpetual smile, as though he was tremendously pleased with his deception: a small boy who had pulled off some great coup.

  Peter removed his coat, folding it methodically and placing it on a chair, the homburg hat on top. The older man whom Hensman had called Christian sucked peacefully on his pipe.

  ‘Do sit down, Darrell.’ Hensman flopped on to the chesterfield. ‘I really am most terribly sorry about all this. You’ve had us a shade worried about, how much you knew, but I had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this. Your young woman’s a nice girl as well.’

  ‘What do you want with us?’ I heard the fatigue and felt it as I spoke, the soreness in my bicep and the ache, like the onset of cold, in my limbs.

  ‘Just a little talk.’ The smile faded from Hensman’s face. ‘A few simple questions. The truth. You see, Darrell, I shall be leaving England and putting matters in other hands,’ he gestured towards the pipe-smoking Christian. ‘Christian and Helen will be here. Nobody will think they have had dealings with me — they have done everything through solicitors and estate agents, so they will be above suspicion.’

  ‘Like Caesar’s wife,’ grunted Christian.

  ‘Quite.’ Hensman gave a small sigh. ‘I shall be sorry to leave, but it was inevitable from the moment that rogue Miller came across the names.’

  ‘It was foolish to have any of it in writing.’ Peter had taken the third chair.

  ‘My dear Peter, I had to keep some record. You are such a methodical race. If a record had not been kept, there would almost certainly have been trouble. It appeared to be safe at the time.’

  ‘We’ll see what they have to say at the Reichsicher-heitshauptamt.’ For the first time I recognized that Peter’s too perfect English was really that of a foreigner.

  ‘Oh, I shall be back, Peter. I can’t see them demoting me now, not after the service I’ve already done.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’re a bloody traitor,’ I heard myself say, melodramatic and pitched too high.

  Hensman laughed, and Peter gave a little snort. ‘What is a traitor, Darrell?’ asked Hensman. ‘I don’t see it like that. I see myself as one of the saviours.’

  ‘You’re a Nazi.’ I knew, as I said it, that I was stating the obvious. For a second I felt foolish, like a gauche boy making some stupid gaffe at a party.

  ‘There’s hope for us all if you’ve only just discovered that,’ he said, the same twinkling smile set firmly on his mouth.

  Again I stated the obvious, ‘And you killed Jane Patterson.’

  He nodded, diffidently, as though accused of some small misdemeanour like travelling without a railway ticket. ‘Desperate times, Darrell, desperate times. A most unhappy business.’

  ‘You should have kept clear,’ snapped Peter.

  ‘Amen to that,’ from Christian. ‘Peter could have handled it.’

  ‘It was Peter’s bungling in Switzerland and Paris that let her get back to England at all.’

  The woman, Helen, came back bearing a tray of cups. There was a heavy silver coffee pot, cream and sugar. ‘Sustenance,’ she said briskly.

  ‘Well, it was done.’ Hensman fiddled with his ring. ‘And should have been done before, in France. I’m sorry, Darrell, is this all double-Dutch to you?’

  I made a gesture meant to convey that I was not interested. ‘I don’t care for murderers.’ Again the feeling of foolishness. A sense of inadequacy.

  ‘In war it’s not murder,’ Peter rose to help the very English Helen pour coffee. ‘Black or white, Darrell?’

  ‘We’re not at war. Yet,’ I added, the horrible normality making the conversation more bizarre. Hensman chuckled.

  ‘You really believe there is no war?’ Peter lifted his eyebrows. ‘Black or white?’

  ‘Black.’ I was surprised that I could even reply to the query. ‘No, there’s no war yet. I grant it will have to come.’

  ‘Darrell,’ Hensman sounded reproachful, ‘Don’t be melodramatic or naïve. Of course we’re at war. Hostilities have yet to break out on a grand scale but those of us who have chosen have no option but to think in terms of war now. You’re not a fool. Do you want this great country to go further to the dogs? Can’t you see what has happened since last time? Do you like to think of your country in the hands of the rabble who take their orders from Russia?’

  ‘I don’t like to think of it in the hands of those who take their orders from Berlin.’

  Christian slowly took his pipe from his mouth and turned in his chair to face me. ‘I am an economist.’ He spoke slowly as though quoting from a learned paper. ‘My wife, Helen, is a social historian. We came to our conclusion, by different roads, many years ago. If Britain continues on its present course, with its so-called democratic ideals, freedom of speech, an individual choice in politics, there is only one outcome.’ He tapped his pipe against the brass ashtray anchored to a weighty leather thong over the chair arm. ‘The power will pass from lawful government into the hands of those we call the working classes. They are disorganized, emotional, greedy. Already the communist movement has thoroughly infiltrated the working classes, and the trade unions. When their power becomes virtually unlimited, then Great Britain will sink into the abyss of the classless state. There is no stopping it, except by replacing that ideal with one which has far more sense to Europe as a whole.’

  ‘You’d replace it with the tyranny of the jackboot.’

  ‘Come, come, it’s not really like that, Darrell. It’s something more glorious, more worthwhile, more beneficial. A country great, powerful, organized, working for a future which has meaning to the whole human race,’ his voice rose dramatically. ‘The enemy is within the gates, so we also have to be within the gates. If we wish to keep this land strong, whole, growing; if we do not want to see the Empire collapse and the whole of our history destroyed, then we must unite in a common cause behind one leader: European brothers in arms.’

  I felt physically sick again, my hand trembling as I grasped the coffee cup. The discordant political melodrama within such sane surroundings gave me the feeling of standing in a hall of distorting mirrors, working not on the body but on the mind. I tried to cut through my own emotionalism and clear my mind of the pictures, forming and reforming, brought into focus by Christian’s small outburst. The crippling danger of the General Strike, which I recalled vividly; the unrest; the poverty and unemployment; the dole queues and the down-at-heel men reaching out for a pair of coppers, or a threepenny piece; the look of hatred as they took it from your hand.

  ‘I don’t think this is the time for political indoctrination, Christian.’ Pet
er spoke sharply.

  ‘In Darrell’s case it is almost certainly too late,’ he replied, still fidgeting with his pipe. ‘But he should understand why it is all happening. He should be made to see that our own army is already within, ready to take over when the Wehrmacht come marching down Whitehall.’ He turned to me again with the face of a country parson preaching against some major heresy, incomprehensible to his shallow flock. ‘And they will come down Whitehall, Darrell, make no mistake about it.

  ‘They’ll have to fight every inch of the way.’

  Behind me, Peter laughed. ‘I think not. The British will not stand until it is too late.’

  ‘And we are here to see if it is already too late for some of our people,’ said Hensman. ‘But then,’ he rose suddenly. ‘But then, you will want to see your pretty Miss Cooke. The pair of you have food enough for thought. A short time together and then we will speak again. You see, Darrell, we have, I think, managed to eliminate all those who had an inkling regarding my particular cell. Miller, who started it all, Beech, his man, and my poor dear Jane.’ For a moment a look of anguish seemed to pass across his face as his shoulders slumped forward. ‘I should have kept her clear. But she knew about Miller and his blackmail. Even though she did not fully understand. She thought I was dead, Darrell, when she ran to your flat. She honestly believed that I was dead, and that I was an innocent victim. Peter here chased her half way across Europe after he killed Miller, and when I walked into your flat she was overjoyed. Well, you must have seen for yourself how pleased she was to find that I was alive. A great shame, she had a brain that one. We could have trained her. Her morals, though ... That was the work she was most suited for.’

  Peter put a hand on my shoulder, gently pushing me away out of the room and along the passage, through a door and another short passage into the wide hall with a curving staircase, the newel post surmounted by a carved piece, like a huge acorn.

  ‘Up,’ he said, sharply, and as I turned the stair I saw Quorn coming out of what I took to be the dining-room. Peter called down to him in German and he replied in a quick, economical sentence. We turned right at the top of the stair, up three steps and along a short corridor, which I considered was immediately above the one which led from the kitchen passage to the hall. He didn’t bother to knock at the door, but took a key from his pocket and unlocked it, pushing me, quite gently, into the room. The door closed behind me and I heard the key turn again, the sliding of the lock ending with a thump of finality.

  Poppy lay on the bed, still in the evening frock she had worn to visit her mother at the Dorchester. Her face was turned away. I think she had been half asleep, for it took a few seconds for her to move and open her eyes. The next minute she was in my arms, holding me as I had never been held before, as if to take me inside her body as a’ protection, either for her or myself, or possibly both of us. I felt the damp patches against my cheeks as she hugged and kissed me again and again. I soothed her; tried to be controlled and calm; said all the words which are meant to reassure people.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ she said, at last regaining control. ‘They said you would be coming, but I thought you were dead. To begin with they said it was an accident. Sim, what’s it all about? Is it Hensman down there? They said they were policemen and that you’d had an accident. A tall man in an Anthony Eden hat …’

  ‘His name’s Peter. I think he’s a German agent, a spy. Did they take you to a ramshackle place: walls with broken glass on them? A room with two beds?’

  ‘Yes, it was filthy. A man called Quorn took me. I knew something was wrong, the other one was with us — with me in the back of the car. I didn’t see his face properly until we got into the room. I thought it was Hensman. He was supposed to be dead, Sim. What’s it all about?’ Her eyes were frantic with bewilderment.

  I told her what I thought. That Hensman was the leader of a Nazi cell in London. A group of highly placed sympathizers waiting to use their influence if war broke out.

  ‘They’re all Hitlerites. I’d say waiting to use their influence; God knows how much damage they’ve already done.’

  ‘That was why the flat was smashed up? And the men at the tube station?’

  ‘I should imagine that’s why the flat got smashed up. I’m not so sure about the tube business. There’s something else.’

  She looked up, eyes large and circled through lack of sleep, damp with tears.

  ‘The Patterson girl. She got killed, in the flat last night.’

  She gave a groan. ‘How? In our flat?’

  ‘Hensman.’ I gestured, indicating that he had killed her. ‘She got George to ring me — she had my address. I haven’t got it all quite straight yet, none of it. But I went over and found her on the bed.’

  She muttered something which sounded like a prayer, mumbled over a rosary. ‘Oh Christ. On the bed.’ Then, ‘What are they going to do with us?’

  My hesitation alarmed her.

  ‘What, Sim? What? You can tell me.’

  ‘I really don’t know, Pops. But I shouldn’t think it’ll be all that pleasant.’

  ‘He said something about leaving tonight — Hensman, that is. Something about a boat.’

  I didn’t intend to remain passive or be led like a docile animal into a slaughterhouse. The room had two windows: leaded lights with catches on the inside. No attempt had been made to secure them, which could mean that they had not considered the full possibility of escape. Though I was conscious that it could also mean they did not expect to keep us for long. I motioned Poppy to remain silent and went over to the casement on the right, tried the catch and craned forward to get bearings. We were situated at the side of the house. Below, the gravel drive ran from the front sweep up to the rear, where the van and car were parked. The other window gave no better view, so as quietly as I could I slipped the catch, opened the window and peeped out. Directly below the pair of windows a shallow piece of tiling sloped to a gutter and a drainpipe running to the ground. It was a fair drop, fourteen or fifteen feet. Not the kind of thing you would normally jump without risking damage. I dismissed the possibility of launching myself from there, for a turned ankle or even a broken limb at the bottom would do for me. If we were still here when it got dark, however, I could try to shin down the drainpipe. As a last resort I might just try it. Or use the sheets on the bed: that was also possible. I closed the window.

  ‘He talked about a boat tonight?’

  ‘Yes. I think he implied that he was taking us.’

  That didn’t make much sense. They had done away with the others out of hand. Why would we be considered any different? As I tried to think about it, there were noises outside the door, and it swung back to reveal Quorn, escorting Helen.

  ‘I’ve brought you some breakfast,’ she said, still in her brisk business-like manner: the school matron in the sick bay. There was a large tray with more coffee on it, toast, eggs, marmalade. Poppy thanked her but I remained silent, trying to size up Quorn. He looked powerful enough to kill me with a blow from one hand. Like Peter, his bearing had a military stamp, the shoulders square, movements precise. He knew what to do with his hands when they were not occupied in some task. As the woman was leaving, Quorn spoke a short sentence to her in German. She smiled. ‘Mr. Darrell will be needed for some questions in about an hour.’ The smile had an unpleasant hint about it, as though she was party to pain. ‘Oh, and you might both like to know that the police are looking for you. I understand there is a warrant out for you, Mr. Darrell. Your friend Mr. Fox wants you for murder.’

  Poppy gave a small gasp. ‘Why?’

  ‘I should imagine because of the body in the flat. We’re both missing, though your mama will have alerted them to the fake policemen at the Dorchester. I should think the warrant is there so that they can hold me. After all, if …’ I stopped short, not wishing to go on and worry her further. ‘It’s okay, Poppy, if we do get clear, I can explain.’

  The key turned. The lock closed again. ‘Let’s
get some food into us,’ I said.

  ‘We ate in silence, a sort of malevolent brooding between us as the full nature of the predicament became more clear in our minds, the depression building as though we could read each other’s thoughts and touch each other’s feelings. As the woman had said, they came for me within the hour. Quorn and the driver. They first allowed me to go to the bathroom where I washed, attended to nature and combed my hair. Hensman was sitting in the room I had thought to be the dining-room, at the end of a small oak table at which, I supposed, he had once , presided over dinner parties and family gatherings. Peter sat beside him, and Quorn ushered me into a chair opposite. I sat down and knew he was there, standing behind me, leaning against the wall.

  ‘You are refreshed?’ Hensman asked.

  ‘You have no right to hold either Miss Cooke or myself.’

  He laughed. ‘And what will you do? Ask to see your consul?’

  Peter smiled and yawned.

  ‘I want some answers, Simon Darrell,’ Hensman continued. ‘The questions are quite simple. If you do not provide satisfactory replies, then I shall have to ask Quorn to do some unpleasant, but most persuasive things to you. Strictly speaking, Quorn is not on his home ground here. He’s on loan to me for a few days from the Geheime Staatspolizei — the Gestapo. You know about them?’