Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Perhaps because you’re a fat, idle bastard?

  “Ah . . . I’m supposed to see a symbol here.”

  “Indeed you are. Ever heard of the British Baltic Fisheries Protection Service?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I was part of the team that set it up after the dust settled in Berlin in ’49.”

  “Fisheries protection? Codfish in danger?”

  “Black entry. Dropping agents into the Baltic states. Dozens of them, literally dozens of them. The poor buggers were tripping over each other in the forests of Courland.”

  “Poor buggers?”

  “Well . . . they none of them lived, did they?”

  This was my cue to shut up and listen. And, forbidden to write anything down, to take all the mental notes I could.

  “It was your lot came up with the idea. Fucking CIA. So happens that at the end of the war we had ships from the Reich navy intact. Everything Jerry hadn’t managed to scuttle in the Baltic. E-boats mainly, light, fast surface craft. Used to skim along at one hell of lick.

  “It was a Russian irritation to harass fishing in international waters in the Baltic. The CIA decided we could redeploy these boats in the pretence we were protecting local fishermen working out of the British Zone, and every so often we’d nip right up to the coast and drop off agents. I can still smell the sticky mud banks on the Latvian coast, standing up to me ankles in it in pitch darkness. All I have to do is close my eyes and I can smell the shit and seaweed stench. Ah . . . me . . . that bit worked fine. Clockwork. In and out before old Ivan could blink.

  “Operation Plumduff. I called it that. It was designed to get agents into the Baltic states, gather intelligence and become . . . I dunno what to call them . . . rallying points for resistance? The spearhead of a counter-revolution? What were we thinking of? Seventy-four men to start a counter-revolution? Madness, utter madness. For a year or so I kidded myself it was working well. I suppose it’s possible they weren’t on to us from the start. But they were. They knew our every move. They set up a fake resistance group in the forests; they’d make contact with the people we dropped, nab ’em, turn ’em or shoot ’em. Worst of it is I reckon some of our chaps are still in Russian gulags to this day.

  “We used blokes we’d gathered up in the war years. Some of them had been refugees in England since the thirties. And we used blokes who’d fled west as the Red Army took everything in its stride in ’45. And we used Germans. We used Nazis. One of them was an SS Standartenführer. Y’know what that is? Full-blown bloody colonel. Jackboots, death’s head insignia, the whole caboodle. A man with the blood of thousands on his hands. He told me he’d torched entire villages in Poland as they retreated.

  “Anyway . . . a few came back to us with cock-and-bull stories the KGB had hammered into them, most we never saw again. By 1951 it was obvious to me it had all gone to hell in a handcart. Our blokes were telling the KGB everything they knew once they got nabbed. But there was more than that. The KGB knew everything. They’d known everything from the start. Looking back I think the only reason they didn’t grab me is because it would have wound up the operation on the spot, and the longer we went on sending men in there the bigger fools we were making of ourselves. If I hadn’t called a halt to the op we might well have sent hundreds of agents in there. I mean, why would they shoot the goose that was laying golden eggs for them?

  “Of course, your lot played hell. I pulled the plug ten days before Burgess and Maclean packed their bags. Great timing on my part. Utterly unplanned. The CIA droned on about England leaking like a sieve. And MI6 had the perfect cover story. Two spies who were already out of the bag. No need to look further.”

  A pause while he topped up his Scotch. In too serious a mode now to bother with the toy crane. He didn’t offer me one. He was totally self-absorbed and silent, sitting with both hands wrapped around the glass.

  “Mr Bentinck. Which one was it? Burgess or Maclean?”

  “Neither. Maclean didn’t know about this and Burgess didn’t know about anything. I think the silly sod saw defection as a kind of holiday. Thought he’d be back when his traveller’s cheques ran out. No, it was neither of them. And before you ask, it wasn’t Philby either. And it wasn’t that tosser Blunt. I knew who it was. I just couldn’t prove it.”

  Another long pause. Another gulp of Scotch.

  “He’s still alive. Not in the service anymore, of course. Bit long in the tooth for that. No. He picked up his gong a few years ago. Enjoys a touch of fame. Plenty of boards to sit on. A small role in public life. Enough to make his wife the darling of the WI and keep her opening church fetes for the rest of her days. No peace for the wicked, eh?”

  At last the penny dropped.

  “And you’re going to name him?”

  “Of course I’m going to fucking name him!”

  “So,” said Syd. “We might have a libel problem.”

  “Not according to Bentinck. He thinks the guy will just come clean.”

  “What makes him think that?”

  “He’s been in touch, apparently.”

  “Apparently?”

  “I have only his word for that.”

  “And the book proposal?”

  “He’s working on that.”

  “Apparently?”

  We met in time for the 2.30 at Sandown Park. A Thursday, early that September.

  Likely Lad came in at evens. Bentinck had nagged me to put a hundred on the nose. So, I doubled my money.

  Then he urged me – I needed no nagging by this time – to join him in backing an outsider. Scary Mary at 16 to 1.

  “A hot tip.”

  “From whom?”

  “That would be telling.”

  “Aha.”

  “For fuck’s sake, boy. I’m an old spy. People tell me things. Bit like being a priest when you come to think about it. Every bugger’s always bursting to tell you something. Spies don’t have to spy, they just have to listen.”

  I was riffling through – counting would not be the word – a wad of notes amounting to 3,000 pounds when he slapped down an envelope in the middle of my stash.

  “There you go, hippie. Your cup runneth over. Call me tonight.”

  He went his way. I went mine. I found myself alone on the train back to Waterloo.

  All the same the power of paranoia was overwhelming. I couldn’t take his proposal out in a public place. Could I? But the public place was empty . . . just some tweedy piss artist snoring off a racing lunch at the far end of the carriage. But what about the Official Secrets Act and all that guff? I had always assumed Bentinck and I would be breeching it. Not that I’d ever been asked to sign it. It’s an odd law that you have to sign up for. Not guilty of theft, rape, murder . . . can’t catch me. I never signed on the line. Made no sense to me.

  I read it when I got home. This made no sense to me either.

  Two double-sided, handwritten A4 . . . no, two foolscap pages, the old rogue was still using fucking foolscap . . . that said absolutely nothing.

  I called him.

  “Mr Bentinck. What happened to all your stories . . . I mean about life in the field?”

  “Bit early for that, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t. We have to give them something. I mean something else.”

  “My childhood didn’t interest you?”

  It did. I realized how he’d acquired his facility with languages. An English childhood cut short when his shit of a father wrapped two and a half tons of 4.9 litre Armstrong Siddeley round a tree and his mother married her lover on the spot and whisked young Bentinck and his baby half-sister off to Zurich. But . . .

  “And Oxford?”

  No. Oxford had bored me silly. My own year there, as well as his. His had been spent necking yards of ale and lobbing bread rolls at oiks. Mine had been spent scrabbling around for meaning in the syphilitic selling violets . . . whatever.

  “And banking?”

  Absofuckinlutely not. Boring, boring, b
oring.

  “Not really.”

  “It’s a major part of my life. Or did you think I paid for a house in the Boltons by selling whelks from a stall in the Mile End Road?”

  “Mr Bentinck . . .”

  “Send it out. You have the contacts. You’ve done bugger all else but boast about your contacts. And if you haven’t got the contacts, then what fucking use are you to me?”

  He hung up.

  This was before the invention of the PC, and well before the invention of the laptop. I sat up that night and typed out, cleaned up, polished Bentinck’s pitch on my Olivetti manual typewriter. I could write it for him . . . Tell what he had told. I could not square the morality of that. He was my client . . . Syd had impressed upon me the duty of care. I could send out his proposal. I could decline to send out his proposal, but I couldn’t overrule him on the matter of content. Besides, one curt, snappy rejection letter and I could get him to revise and rethink.

  I’d send it to Jenny Broome at Nathan Wolowitz and Parker. I’d no idea who Parker was or ever had been. Nathan was one of those Eastern Europeans who’d landed in England as refugees from Hitler and had come to dominate London publishing in the post-war years. Nathan was the kind of man to publish Bentinck, and Jenny was the kind of woman not to. I’d hear from her pretty quick. And it would be curt and snappy.

  Paranoia tiptoed up to my window yet again. I delivered Bentinck’s proposal by hand. Walked over to Great Russell Street in my lunch hour and dropped it off at reception.

  At seven, when I stepped through the door of my flat in Primrose Hill, a cop sucker-punched me and I went down and out. I flatter myself a smaller man might have been down for longer. But down is down. When I sat up the world was topsy-turvy. They’d thrown everything I owned on the floor and kicked in the cones of my new speakers.

  The cop set a chair upright with one hand and with the other grabbed me by the shirt front and hauled me into it. I weigh 180. I was tossed like a leaf.

  “Where is it?”

  The temptation to ask “Where is what?” I readily dismissed. He’d only hit me again.

  “On the desk in my office.”

  “All of it?”

  “All there is. Nothing I imagine you haven’t seen already today.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I have Mr Bentinck’s handwritten proposal and a carbon of the typed version. They differ only in so far as I cleaned up the custard stains and his punctuation.”

  Another cop emerged from my bedroom. Smaller than the first, but dressed the same. Like two comic coppers in a Daily Express Giles cartoon – trench coat and trilby, regardless of the weather, and shoes I had learnt were referred to as beetle-crushers.

  He was higher in rank, I guessed, but they weren’t offering any introductions.

  Cop Two righted another chair and sat opposite me. I could smell pipe tobacco, Old Spice and NHS dentistry.

  “Delighted to hear you’re not trying to be a smart alec, son. Sensible of you not to be asking about warrants and such. National security, after all. Warrants mean nowt where the defence of the realm is concerned. So happens I’ve read nowt. So, why don’t you tell me what’s on your desk?”

  “If this is business, why not make an appointment and come to my office?”

  An exchange of glances between them. One of them definitely meaning “Shall I thump him again, boss?” . . . the other more quizzical. He was weighing up the idea.

  Then:

  “Why not? We’ve found bugger all here.”

  “I’m free at ten.”

  “Make it nine, you lazy little sod.”

  He leaned in closer. Dropped his voice.

  “And don’t think you’re getting off lightly. We know all about you. Draft dodger. Fuck with us and you might find yourself on a plane to Vietnam.”

  Please. This was a red rag to a bull.

  I whispered back, “The war ended ten years ago. Carter pardoned me in ’79 and if you know of any extradition treaty between the UK and the USA that covers military service . . . then you’re way ahead of me.”

  There. That was telling him.

  There. That was his pal knocking me sideways with a punch that lifted me off the chair. Me and my big mouth.

  I lay there, tasting blood, staring at the beetle-crushers.

  “Dearie, dearie me, just when we were getting along so nicely. Nine o’clock, son. Don’t be late.”

  I was up half the night clearing up the mess. I could weep for the speakers. I could weep for the albums. One of the bastards had taken a pocket knife to Death and the Maiden.

  Roger George Cholmondoley Bentinck, this had better be worth it. Don’t be late? Damn right. There was three grand in cash locked in my desk drawer. I wasn’t going to let the flatfoots get their hands on that.

  I got in at eight.

  Vera Buckett damn near dropped her fag when I handed her the money.

  “In the ladies, Vera. Take twenty for your trouble.”

  On the dot of nine, she phoned through that two gentlemen were in reception.

  They came into my office. I had the Compleat Bentinck in a brown cardboard folder on the desktop. I spun it round so they could see the title.

  Unnamed Memoir by Roger Bentinck.

  They sat at the back of my office. Boss read the file, Thumper scraped his nails with a pocket knife – doubtless the same one he’d taken to Schubert.

  “Is this it?”

  “Yep.”

  “School and Oxford and his dad and all that?”

  “Yep.”

  “You let us turn your gaff over for this? You’re a twat.”

  “So people keep telling me. And I don’t recall being able to stop you trashing my flat.”

  The file was slapped back on my desk. I could see the cogwheels turning. He was weighing whether or not to search my office. I put my money on “not”. I might be a piece of Yankee shit to him, but the Hon. Syd was known to them. He had his reputation. Not that they wouldn’t mess with him, but they’d not do it lightly.

  When they’d gone, the Buckett woman stood in my doorway, blew a smoke ring and moved on, just as the phone rang.

  It was Jenny Broome.

  “Jack, is this some sort of joke? You’ve been hyping this to me for over a month. It’s . . . it’s bollocks.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why send it me?”

  “Jenny, would you mind putting this in writing? Give me something I can show Bentinck.”

  “What?”

  “Just a quick critique and rejection on headed paper.”

  “You bastard. You’re just using me to flush him out.”

  “Yep.”

  A pause. She was seriously considering telling me to get lost. I was wondering whether I dared tell her that Bentinck knew the name of the Fifth Man. Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Guess Who.

  “You owe me, Jack Turner. You fucking owe me.”

  “Agreed. Jenny . . . you haven’t had any . . . visitors today or yesterday?”

  “Eh? You mean the filth? No . . . Why would they bother with this?”

  “Only because they don’t know what it is yet.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Deal with that if and when it arises. Meanwhile, you owe me lunch. Syd never has any trouble getting into the Ivy. You can damn well take me there.”

  About an hour passed. Syd was never in before ten. Why not? He owned the “joint”, as they say in Hollywood.

  He looked at my bruises.

  “Anything I should know about?”

  “Nothing you hadn’t predicted.”

  Around 11.30 Syd returned with his Bart Simpson mug full of milky coffee and a packet of McVitie’s Hobnobs, to which he was all but addicted.

  “It’s not an Official Secrets matter.”

  I could not hear a question there.

  “We may take it as read, Bentinck has signed. You haven’t, and never should. But there’s this new thing . . . the Obligation of Confidentiality
or some such guff. He hasn’t signed that either. Be amazed if anyone who left the service in the sixties had. So, what have they got?”

  “The suspicion, chasing the certainty, that what Bentinck has to say will violate the Official Secrets Act. The identity of a Russian mole is a secret . . . but is it an official secret? Is it a British secret or a Russian secret, and if the latter, who gives a toss?”

  “Couldn’t have put it better myself. Do have a Hobnob.”

  The following day I got Jenny’s rejection letter, raised an eyebrow and forwarded a copy to Bentinck. The day after that Bentinck rang me.

  “‘Unrevealing to the point of tedium’! ‘The life and times of another old English bore’!”

  Weeeell . . . I did feel Jenny had overdone it just a tad.

  “Who is this fucking cunt?”

  “Quite possibly the best young editor in London.”

  “Then who’s the best old editor in London?”

  “Mr Bentinck, that’s not the—”

  “You sent it out half-cock to some young twat who doesn’t know she’s born yet . . . You pass me off as an old bore with nothing to say for himself. What in God’s name do you think you’re playing at?”

  “Mr Bentinck, you asked me to send it out as it was. I told you beforehand . . .”

  “You told me fuck all. All you’ve done is boast that you know every fucking publisher in fucking London. And who do you know? Some man-hating fucking bluestocking!”

  “Mr Bentinck, that proposal needed more work. I told you that.”

  “Then why did you send it out, Sonny Jim?”

  “Because you told me to.”

  “Fuck you. Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou!”

  The fuck yous would fill a page and why waste paper? I listened, and when he finally paused for breath I attempted another polite interjection, but he charged in with . . .

  “You’re fired!”

  A couple of minutes passed.

  Vera Buckett appeared, fag adroop on lower lip, carrying an ashtray. She always carried an ashtray if she came into my office. Her one concession to a non-smoker was not not to smoke, it was not to flick ash on the carpet.

  “Okay, Vera, let’s hear it.”

  “Are you glad he’s gone?”

  “Relieved might be the word.”