A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré

  ‘They’re estranged.’

  ‘Not exactly what he told me, but still.’

  Brief silence while Dr Costello apparently checks the record:

  ‘We are in touch with a mother,’ she recites. ‘Any developments, any decisions regarding Jeb’s treatment and welfare, will be referred to his natural mother. She is also his empowered guardian.’

  The phone pressed to his ear, Kit flings up an arm, and at the same time swings round to Suzanna in astonishment and blatant disbelief. But his voice stays steady. He’s a diplomat, he’s not about to give the game away.

  ‘Well, many thanks for that, Dr Costello. Very kind of you indeed. At least he’s got some family to look after him. Can you give me his mother’s phone number? Maybe she and I could have a chat.’

  But Dr Costello, kind though she may be, cites data protection and regrets that parting with Jeb’s mother’s number is not, in the circumstances, something she is able to do. She rings off.

  Kit on fire.

  With Suzanna looking on in approving silence, he dials 1471 and establishes that the caller withheld her number.

  He calls Enquiries, gets himself put through to Ruislip General Hospital, asks for the mental-health wing, asks for Dr Costello.

  The male nurse couldn’t be more helpful:

  ‘Dr Costello’s attending a course, mate, back next week.’

  ‘How long’s she been away?’

  ‘Also a week, mate. It’s a he, actually. Joachim. Sounds more German to me, but he’s Portuguese.’

  Kit somehow keeps his head.

  ‘And Dr Costello has not come into the hospital during all that time?’

  ‘No, mate, sorry. Can anyone else help at all?’

  ‘Well, yes, actually, I’d like to talk to one of your inpatients, a chap named Jeb. Just tell him it’s Paul.’

  ‘Jeb? Doesn’t ring a bell, mate, hang on a jiffy –’

  A different nurse comes to the phone, also male, but not so friendly:

  ‘No Jeb here. Got a John, got a Jack. That’s your lot.’

  ‘But I thought he was a regular,’ Kit protests.

  ‘Not here. Not Jeb. Try Sutton.’

  Now the same thought occurs simultaneously to both Kit and Suzanna: get on to Emily, fast.

  Best if Suzanna rings her. With Kit, just at the moment, she tends to be a bit scratchy.

  Suzanna calls Emily’s cellphone, leaves a message.

  By midday, Emily has called back twice. The sum of her enquiries is that a Dr Joachim Costello recently joined the mental-health unit at Ruislip as a temporary, but he’s a Portuguese citizen and the course he’s attending is to improve his English. Did their Costello sound Portuguese?

  ‘No she bloody didn’t!’ Kit roars at Toby, repeating the answer he gave Emily on the phone as he paces the stable floor. ‘And she was a bloody woman, and she sounded like an Essex schoolmistress with a plum up her arse, and Jeb hasn’t got a bloody mother and never did have, as he was pleased to tell me. I’m not a big chap for intimate revelations as a rule, but he was talking his heart out for the first time in three bloody years. Never met his mother, only thing he knows about her is her name: Caron. He fled the coop when he was fifteen and joined the army as an apprentice. Now tell me he made it all up!’

  *

  It is Toby’s turn to go to the window and, freed from Kit’s accusing stare, abandon himself to his thoughts.

  ‘By the time this Dr Costello rang off, had you given her any reason to think you didn’t believe her?’ he asks at last.

  Equally long deliberation by Kit:

  ‘No. I hadn’t. I played her along.’

  ‘Then as far as she’s concerned, or they are: mission accomplished.’

  ‘Probably.’

  But Toby isn’t about to be satisfied with ‘probably’:

  ‘So far as they’re concerned, whoever they are, you’ve been squared. Fobbed off. You’re on side’ – gathering conviction as he speaks. ‘You believe the gospel according to Crispin, you believe Dr Costello even if she’s the wrong sex, and you believe Jeb is schizoid and a compulsive liar and is sitting in the isolation ward of a mental hospital in Ruislip and can’t be visited by his fear object.’

  ‘No, I bloody don’t,’ Kit snaps. ‘Jeb was telling me the literal truth. It shone out of him. It may be tearing him apart: that’s another matter. Man’s as sane as you or me.’

  ‘I absolutely accept that, Kit. I really do,’ Toby says at his most forbearing. ‘However, for Suzanna’s protection as well as your own, I suggest that the position you have very cleverly carved out for yourself in the eyes of the opposition is well worth preserving.’

  ‘Until when?’ Kit demands, unappeased.

  ‘How about until I find Jeb? Isn’t that why you asked me to come here? Or are you proposing to go and look for him yourself – thereby, incidentally, setting the whole howling mob on you?’ Toby demands, no longer quite so diplomatically.

  And to this, for a while at least, Kit can find no convincing answer, so instead chews at his lip, and grimaces, and gives himself a gulp of Scotch.

  ‘Anyway, you’ve got that tape you stole,’ he growls, by way of bitter consolation. ‘That meeting in the Private Office with Quinn, Jeb and me. Stored away somewhere. That’s proof, if it’s ever needed. It would scupper you, all right. Might scupper me as well. Not sure I care too much about that either.’

  ‘My stolen tape proves intent,’ Toby replies. ‘It doesn’t prove the operation ever took place, and it certainly doesn’t address the outcome.’

  Kit grudgingly mulls this over.

  ‘So what you’re trying to tell me is’ – as if Toby is somehow dodging the point – ‘Jeb’s the only witness to the shootings. Right?’

  ‘Well, the only one willing to talk, so far as we know,’ Toby agrees, not quite liking the sound of what he has just said.

  *

  If he slept he wasn’t aware of it.

  Sometime in the few short hours in bed he heard a woman’s cry and supposed it was Suzanna’s. And after the cry, a flurry of feet across the dust sheets in the corridor below him, and they must have been Emily’s feet, hastening to her mother’s side, a theory borne out by the murmurings that followed.

  And after the murmurings, Emily’s bedside light shining up through the cracks in the floorboards – is she reading, thinking, or listening for her mother? – until either he or Emily went to sleep, and he supposed he went first because he didn’t remember her light going out.

  And when he woke later than he meant to, and hurried downstairs to breakfast: no Emily and no Sheba, just Kit in his church tweeds and Suzanna in her hat.

  ‘It was honourable of you, Toby,’ Suzanna said, grasping his hand and keeping it. ‘Wasn’t it, Kit? Kit was worried sick, we both were, and you came straight away. And poor Jeb’s honourable too. And Kit’s not good at sly, are you, darling? Not that you are, Toby, I don’t mean that at all. But you’re young and you’re clever, you’re in the Office, and you can delve without, well’ – little smile – ‘losing your pension.’

  Standing in the granite porch she fervently embraces him:

  ‘We never had a son, you see, Toby. We tried to, but we lost him.’

  Followed by a gruff ‘be in touch then’ from Kit.

  *

  Toby and Emily sat in the conservatory, Toby perched on an old sunlounger and Emily on a rush chair at the furthest end of the room. The distance between them was something they had tacitly agreed upon.

  ‘Good talk with Dad last night?’

  ‘If you can call it that.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like me to go first,’ Emily suggested. ‘Then you won’t be tempted into some indiscretion you may regret.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Toby replied politely.

  ‘Jeb and my father are planning to produce a document about their exploits together, nature unknown. Their document will have earth-shaking consequences in official quarters. In other words, they will be
whistle-blowers. At issue are a dead woman and her child, according to my mother. Or possibly dead. Or probably dead. We don’t know, but we fear the worst. Am I warm so far?’

  Receiving only a straight stare from Toby, she drew in her breath and went on:

  ‘Jeb fails to make the date. So no whistle. Instead, a woman doctor who is patently not a doctor and should have been a man calls Kit, alias Paul, and tells him that Jeb has been confined in a mental hospital. Investigations reveal this to be untrue. I feel I’m talking to myself.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Jeb, meanwhile, is unfindable. He has no surname, and is not in the habit of leaving a forwarding address. Official avenues of enquiry, such as the police, are closed – not for us frail women to reason why. You’re still listening, I hope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Toby Bell is some kind of player in this scenario. My mother likes you. My father prefers not to, but sees you as a necessary evil. Is that because he doubts your allegiance to the cause?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him that.’

  ‘I thought I’d ask you. Is he expecting you to find Jeb for him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For both of you, then?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Can you find him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you know what you’ll do when you have found him? I mean, if Jeb’s about to blow the whistle on some great scandal, perhaps you might have a last-minute change of heart and feel bound to turn him over to the authorities. Might you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I’m to believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re not settling some old score?’

  ‘Why the hell should I be doing that?’ Toby protested, but Emily graciously ignored this little display of temper.

  ‘I’ve got his registration number,’ she said.

  She had lost him. ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘Jeb’s.’ She was fumbling in the thigh pocket of her tracksuit. ‘I photographed his van while he was giving Dad grief at Bailey’s. I photographed the licence disc, too’ – extracting an iPhone and fiddling with the icons – ‘Valid twelve months and paid eight weeks ago.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you given the registration number to Kit?’ Toby asked in bewilderment.

  ‘Because Kit fucks up, and I don’t want my mother living through a fucked-up manhunt.’

  Unfolding herself from the rush chair, she strolled over to him and held the phone deliberately to his face.

  ‘I’m not putting this into my own phone,’ Toby said. ‘Kit doesn’t want electronic. I don’t either.’

  He had a pen but nothing to write on. She produced a piece of paper from a drawer. He wrote down the registration number of Jeb’s van.

  ‘If you give me your cellphone number, perhaps I can tell you how my enquiries are going,’ he suggested, by now recovered.

  She gave him her cellphone number. He wrote that down too.

  ‘And you might as well have my surgery number and hospital roster,’ she said, and watched him add it all to his collection.

  ‘But we say absolutely nothing specific to each other over the phone, all right?’ he warned her severely. ‘No winks and nods or arch references’ – remembering his security training – ‘and if I text you or need to leave a message for you, I’ll be Bailey, after the Fayre.’

  She gave a shrug, as if to humour him.

  ‘And will I be disturbing you if I have to call you late at night?’ he enquired finally, doing his best to sound, if anything, even more practical and down-to-earth.

  ‘I live alone, if that’s what you’re asking,’ she said.

  It was.

  5

  On the slow train back to London, through the hours of half-sleep in his flat, and on the bus to work on the Monday morning, Toby Bell, not for the first time in his life, pondered his motives for putting his career and freedom at risk.

  If his future had never looked rosier, which was what Human Resources were forever telling him, why go back to his past? Was this his old conscience he was dealing with – or a newly invented one? And you’re not settling some old score? Emily had asked him: and what was that supposed to mean? Did she imagine he was on some kind of vengeance kick against the Fergus Quinns and Jay Crispins of this world, two men of such glaring mediocrity in his eyes as to be not worth a second thought? Or was she externalizing some hidden motive of her own? Was it Emily who was settling an old score – against the entire race of men, her father included? There had been moments when she’d given him that impression, just as there had been others, admittedly short-lived, when she had seemed to come over to his side, whatever that side was.

  Yet for all this fruitless soul-searching – perhaps even because of it – Toby’s performance on his first day at his new desk was exemplary. By eleven o’clock he had interviewed every member of his new staff, defined their areas of responsibility, cut potential overlap and streamlined consultation and control. By midday he was delivering a well-received mission statement to a meeting of managers. And by lunchtime he was sitting in his regional director’s office, munching a sandwich with her. It was not till his day’s work was well and truly done that, pleading an external appointment, he took a bus to Victoria station, and from there, at the height of the rush-hour bustle, telephoned his old friend Charlie Wilkins.

  *

  Every British Embassy should have its Charlie Wilkins, they used to say in Berlin, for how could they ever have managed without this genial, unflappable sixty-something English ex-copper with half a lifetime of diplomatic protection under his belt? A bollard jumped out at your car, did it, as you were leaving the Bastille Day bash at the French Embassy? Shame on it! An overzealous German policeman took it into his head to breathalyse you? The liberty! Charlie Wilkins will have a quiet word with his certain friends in the Bundespolizei and see what can be done.

  But in Toby’s case the boot, unusually, was on the other foot because he was one of the few people in the world who had actually managed to do a favour for Charlie and his German wife, Beatrix. Their daughter, a budding cellist, had lacked the academic qualifications for an audition at a grand music college in London. The principal of the college turned out to be a bosom friend of Toby’s maternal aunt, herself a music teacher. Phone calls were hastily made, auditions arranged. No Christmas had gone by since but Toby, wherever he was stationed, had received a box of Beatrix’s home-made Zuckergebäck and a gilded card proudly reporting their brilliant daughter’s progress. And when Charlie and Beatrix retired gracefully to Brighton, the Zuckergebäck and the cards kept flowing, and Toby never failed to write his little note of thanks.

  *

  The Wilkins’s bungalow in Brighton was set back from its fellows and might have been transported from the Black Forest. Ranks of red-coated tulips lined the path to the Hansel and Gretel porch. Garden gnomes in Bavarian costume thrust out their buttoned chests, and cacti clawed at the enormous picture window. Beatrix had decked herself in her best finery. Over Baden wine and liver dumplings the three friends talked old times and celebrated the musical accomplishments of the Wilkins daughter. And after coffee and sweet liqueurs, Charlie and Toby retired to the den in the back garden.

  ‘It’s for a lady I know, Charlie,’ Toby explained, imagining for convenience’s sake that the lady was Emily.

  Charlie Wilkins gave a contented smile. ‘I said to Beatrix: if it’s Toby, look for the lady.’

  And this lady, Charlie – he explained, now blushing becomingly – was out shopping last Saturday and managed to go head to head with a parked van and do it serious damage, which was doubly unfortunate since she’s already got a whole bunch of points on her licence.

  ‘Witnesses?’ Charlie Wilkins enquired sympathetically.

  ‘She’s sure not. It was in an empty corner of the car park.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Charlie Wilkins commented, with a slight note of scepticism. ‘And no
CCTV footage at all?’

  ‘Again not,’ said Toby, avoiding Charlie’s eye. ‘So far as we know, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Charlie Wilkins echoed politely.

  And since she’s a good girl at heart, Toby forged on, and since her conscience won’t let her sleep till she’s paid her dues – but no way can she afford to lose her licence for six months, Charlie – and since she at least had the nous to write down the van’s registration number, Toby was wondering – well, she was wondering whether there was any way – and delicately left the sentence for Charlie to finish for himself.

  ‘And has our lady friend any idea what this exclusive service might cost us?’ Charlie enquired, pulling on a pair of grandfatherly spectacles to scrutinize the piece of plain card Toby had passed him.

  ‘Whatever it costs, Charlie, I’m paying for it,’ Toby replied grandly, with renewed acknowledgements to Emily.

  ‘Well, in that case, if you will kindly join Beatrix for a nightcap, and bear with me for ten minutes,’ said Charlie, ‘the charge will be two hundred pounds to the widows and orphans fund of the Metropolitan Police, cash please, no receipt, and for old times’ sake, nothing for me.’

  And ten minutes later, sure enough Charlie was handing back the card with a name and address written out in a policeman’s careful hand, and Toby was saying, Fantastic, Charlie, wonderful, she’ll be over the moon, and can we please stop at a cash machine on the way to the station?

  But none of this quite removed the cloud of concern that had formed on Charlie Wilkins’s normally untroubled face, and it was still there when they stopped at a hole in the wall and Toby duly handed Charlie his two hundred pounds.

  ‘That gentleman you asked me to find out about just now,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t mean the car. I mean the gentleman who owns it. The Welsh gentleman, according to his address.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘My certain friend in the Met informs me that the said gentleman with the unpronounceable address has a rather large red ring round his name, in a metaphorical manner of speaking.’