“But, Jack, it’s all so circumstantial—you said so yourself,” Brammel brayed, never stronger than when demonstrating that two positives made a negative. “‘ If you run any succession of coincidences through a computer, you will find that everything looks possible and most things look highly likely.’ Who said that, pray? I’m quoting you deliberately, Jack. We’re sitting at your feet, remember? Good heavens, I never thought I’d have to defend Pym against you!”
“I was wrong,” said Brotherhood.
“But who says you were? Only you, I think. So Pym has a Czech code pad in his chimney place,” Brammel conceded. “He has a camera we didn’t know about with a document-copying attachment or whatever. Good heavens, Jack, think of all the bits of equipment you’ve picked up in your time, just in the ordinary way of playing agents back and forth! Gold bars, cameras, microdot lenses, concealment devices, I don’t know what. You could have started your own pawnbroker’s shop with them. All right I grant you he should have turned the stuff in. I see him as being rather in the position of a police detective who has taken a lot of swag off one of his informants. He shoves it in a drawer—or in the fireplace—hides it from his family and one day it’s all discovered. But it doesn’t make him a burglar. It makes him an efficient policeman who’s been cavalier or at worst careless.”
“He’s not careless,” said Brotherhood. “He’s not a risk taker.”
“All right, so now he is. The fellow’s had a nervous breakdown, he’s acting clean out of character, he’s hidden himself away somewhere, he’s putting out the usual cries for help,” Brammel reasoned, in a note of saintly tolerance. “Probably a girlfriend, knowing him. We shall find out soon enough. But look at the scenario, Jack. His father dies. He’s the artistic type of officer, always wanting to write the great novel, paint, sculpt, take sabbaticals, I don’t know what. He’s hit a menopausal age in life. He’s been living under a cloud of suspicion for far too long. Do you wonder he’s had a bit of a crack-up? Be a wonder if he hadn’t, if you ask me. All right, I don’t condone it. And I shall want to know why he took that burnbox, though you tell me he knew everything that was in it anyway and wrote most of it himself, so what’s the difference? And when we find him, I may pull him out of the field for a while. There is still no justification for me to raise a public hue and cry. To go to my Minister and say ‘We’ve found another one.’ Least of all to the Americans. Bang go the barter treaties. Bang goes the intelligence pooling and the private line to Langley that often means so much more than normal diplomatic links. Do you want me to risk all that until we know?”
“Bo feels you should stop flying solo,” Nigel said when they were back on the servants’ side of Brammel’s door. “I’m afraid I agree. From now on you’ll make no field enquiries without my personal authority. You’re to remain on call and you’re to start nothing. Is that clear?”
It is clear, thought Brotherhood, examining the house from across the road. It is clear that the rewards of my old age are dangerously threatened. He tried to remember who it was in mythology who was cursed to live long enough to witness the consequences of his bad advice. The house was in the best of Chelsea’s many beautiful backwaters, set at the end of a long garden only partly visible above the gate. An air of decadence pervaded its genteel shabbiness, an unworldly languor inhabited its flaking stucco. Brotherhood walked past it several times, checking the upper windows, studying the skyline for sight of a church, for Pym’s mental substitutions were becoming rooted in his mind like spy talk. On the fourth floor a dormer window was lit and curtained. As he watched he saw a figure pass across it, too quickly and too far away for him to tell whether it was man or woman.
He took a last look up and down the road. A brass bellpush was set into the gatepost. He pressed it and waited but not long. He shoved the gate, it creaked and opened, he stepped inside and closed it after him. The garden was a secret patch of English countryside walled on three sides. Nothing overlooked it. The sounds of traffic ceased miraculously. The flagstone path was slippery with unswept leaves. Home, he rehearsed again. Home in Scotland, home in Wales. Home by the sea. Home as an upper window and a church. Home as an aristocratic mother who took him visiting great houses. He passed the statue of a draped woman, one stone breast offered to the autumn night. Home as a series of concentric fantasies, all with the same truth at the centre. Who had said that?—Pym or himself? Home as promises to women he didn’t love. The front door was opening as he reached it. A young manservant was watching him approach. His monkey jacket had a regimental cut. Behind him, unrestored gilt mirrors and a chandelier glinted against dark wallpaper. “He’s got a boy name of Stegwold living there,” Superintendent Bellows of police liaison had reported. “If you were old enough, I’d read you his record of convictions.”
“Sir Kenneth in, son?” said Brotherhood pleasantly as he wiped his shoes on the mat and shook off his raincoat.
“I don’t know, do I? Who shall I say?”
“Mr. Marlow, son, and I’d like ten minutes with him alone on a mutual matter.”
“From?” said the boy.
“His constituency, son,” said Brotherhood just as pleasantly.
The boy tripped quickly upstairs. Brotherhood’s gaze skimmed the hall. Hats, idiosyncratic. Coaching overcoat, green with age. One Guards bowler, ditto. Army service cap with Colds-tream badge. Blue china urn stuffed with ancient golf clubs, walkingsticks and warped tennis racquets. The boy came mincing down the stairs again, trailing one hand on the banisters, unable to resist an entrance.
“He’ll see you now, Mr. Marlow,” he said.
The stairs were lined with portraits of rude men. In a dining-room, two places were laid with enough silver for a banquet. A decanter, cold meats, and cheeses lay on the sideboard. It was not till Brotherhood noticed a couple of dirty plates that he realised the meal was already over. The library smelled of mildew and the fumes of paraffin from a stove. A gallery ran along three walls. Half the balustrade was missing. The stove had been shoved into the fireplace and in front of it stood a clothes-horse hung with socks and underpants. In front of the clothes-horse stood Sir Kenneth Sefton Boyd. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and an open-necked shirt and old satin slippers with gold-stitched monograms worn away. He was burly and thick-necked, with uneven pads of flesh round his jaw and eyes. His mouth was bent to one side as if by a clenched fist. He spoke with the bent side while the other stayed still.
“Marlow?”
“How do you do, sir,” said Brotherhood.
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to speak to you alone if I may, sir.”
“Policeman?”
“Not quite, sir. Something like.”
He handed Sir Kenneth a card. This is to certify that the bearer is engaged in enquiries affecting the national security. For confirmation please ring Scotland Yard extension so-and-so. The extension led to Superintendent Bellows’s department, which knew all Brotherhood’s names. Unimpressed, Sir Kenneth handed the card back.
“So you’re a spy.”
“Of a sort, I suppose. Yes.”
“Want a drink? Beer? Scotch? What do you want to drink?”
“A scotch would be very welcome, sir, now you mention it.”
“Scotch, Steggie,” said Sir Kenneth. “Get him a scotch, will you? Ice? Soda? What do you want in your scotch?”
“A little water would be welcome.”
“All right. Give him water. Bring him a jug. Put it on the table. Over there by the tray. Then he can help himself. You can go away. And top mine up, while you’re about it. Want to sit down, Marlow? Over there do you?”
“I thought we were going to the Albion,” said Steggie from the door.
“Can’t now. Got to talk to this chap.”
Brotherhood sat. Sir Kenneth sat opposite him; his gaze was yellowed and unresponsive. Brotherhood had seen dead men whose eyes were more alive. His hands had fallen into his lap and one of them kept flipping like a beached fish. On
the table between them lay a backgammon board with the pieces in mid-battle. Who was he playing with? thought Brotherhood. Who dined with him? Who was sharing his music with him? Who warmed my chair before I sat in it?
“You surprised to see me, sir?” said Brotherhood.
“Take a bit more than that to surprise me, old boy.”
“Anyone else been here recently, making funny enquiries? Foreign gentlemen? Americans?”
“Not that I know of. Why should they?”
“There’s a bunch going round from our own vetting side as well, I’m told. I wondered whether any of them had been here. I tried to find out before I left the office but there’s a lack of coordination, it’s all moving so fast.”
“What is?”
“Well, sir, it seems that your old school friend Mr. Magnus Pym has disappeared. They’re looking into everyone who might have knowledge of his whereabouts. That will include you naturally.”
Sir Kenneth’s eye lifted to the door.
“Something out there bothering you, sir?” said Brotherhood.
Sir Kenneth rose, went to the door and pulled it open. Brotherhood heard a scuffle of footsteps on the stairs but he was too late to see who it was, though he jostled Sir Kenneth aside in his haste to look.
“Steggie, I want you to go to the Albion ahead of me,” Sir Kenneth called into the well. “Go now. I’ll join you later. I don’t want him hearing this stuff,” he told Brotherhood as he closed the door. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.”
“With his record I don’t blame you,” said Brotherhood. “Mind if I look upstairs now we’re standing?”
“Yes, I damn well do. And don’t lay hands on me again. I don’t fancy you. Got a warrant?”
“No.”
Resuming his chair, Sir Kenneth took a spent matchstick from the pocket of his smoking jacket and set to work on his fingernails with its charred end. “Get a warrant,” he advised. “Get a warrant and I might let you look. Other hand I mightn’t.”
“Is he here?” said Brotherhood.
“Who?”
“Pym.”
“Don’t know. Didn’t hear. Who’s Pym?”
Brotherhood was still standing. He was unnaturally pale, and it took him a moment to steady his voice before he spoke again.
“I’ve got a deal for you,” he said.
Sir Kenneth still did not hear.
“Hand him over to me. You go upstairs. Or you ring him. You do whatever you’ve agreed to do between you. And you hand him over to me. In return I’ll keep your name out of it, and Steggie’s name out of it. The alternative is ‘Baronet M.P. shelters very old friend on the run.’ It’s also a serious possibility that you will be charged as an accomplice. How old is Steggie?”
“Old enough.”
“How old was he when he started here?”
“Look it up. Don’t know.”
“I’m Pym’s friend too. There are worse people than me coming looking for him. Ask him. If he agrees, I agree. I’ll keep your name out of it. Just give him to me and you and Steggie need never hear from him or me again.”
“Sounds to me as though you’ve more to lose than we have,” said Sir Kenneth, surveying the results of his manicure.
“I doubt it.”
“Question of what we’ve all got left, I suppose. Can’t lose what you haven’t got. Can’t miss what you don’t care about. Can’t sell what isn’t yours.”
“Pym can, apparently,” said Brotherhood. “He’s been selling his nation’s secrets by the looks of it.”
Sir Kenneth continued to admire his fingernails. “For money?”
“Probably.”
Sir Kenneth shook his head. “Didn’t care about money. Love was all he cared about. Didn’t know where to find it. Clown really. Tried too hard.”
“Meanwhile he’s wandering around England with a lot of papers that aren’t his to give away, and you and I are supposed to be patriotic Englishmen.”
“Lot of chaps do a lot of things they shouldn’t do. That’s when they need their chums.”
“He wrote to his son about you. Do you know that? Some drivel about a penknife. Does that ring a bell?”
“Matter of fact it does.”
“Who’s Poppy?”
“Never heard of her.”
“Or him?”
“Nice thought, but no.”
“Wentworth?”
“Never been there. Hate the place. What about it?”
“There was a girl called Sabina he apparently got caught up with in Austria. He ever mention her?”
“Not that I remember. Pym got caught up with a lot of girls. Not that it did him much good.”
“He rang you, didn’t he? On Monday night, from a callbox.”
With startling abruptness, Sir Kenneth flung up one arm in pleasure and gave a hoot of merriment. “Pissed out of his skull,” he declared, very loud. “Ossified. Haven’t heard him so pissed since Oxford when six of us put away a case of his father’s port. Pretended some queen from Merton gave it to him, I don’t know why. There weren’t any queens in Merton in those days. Not rich ones. We were all at Trinity.”
It was after midnight. Back in the confinement of his Shepherd Market flat with the pigeons on the parapet Brotherhood poured himself another vodka and added orange juice from a carton. He had thrown his jacket on the bed, his pocket tape-recorder lay before him on the desk. He was jotting as he listened.
“. . . don’t go to Wiltshire a lot as a rule while Parliament’s in session but Sunday was my second wife’s birthday and our boy was down from school so I went and did my stuff and thought I’d stay on for a day or two and see what gives in the constituency. . . .”
Forward again: “. . . don’t normally answer the phone in Wiltshire but Monday’s her bridge night and I was in the library playing a game of backgammon so when the phone rang I thought I might as well take it rather than spoil her four. Half past eleven it must have been but Jean’s bridge nights go on for ever. Chap’s voice. Must be her boyfriend, I thought. Bloody cheek, really, this time of night. ‘Hullo? Sef? That Sef?’ ‘Who the hell’s that?’ I said. ‘It’s me. Magnus. My father’s died. Over here to bury him.’ I thought, Poor old chap. Nobody likes to have his old man die on him. . . . That right for you? More water? Help yourself.”
Brotherhood hears himself roar “Thanks” as he leans towards the water jug. Then the sounds of a flood as he pours.
“‘ How’s Jem?’ he says. Jemima’s my sister. They had a dingdong once, never came to much. Married a florist. Extraordinary thing. Chap grows flowers all along the road to Basing-stoke. Puts his name up on a board. Doesn’t seem to bother her. Not that she sees much of him. Navigational problems, our Jem. Same as me.”
Forward again: “. . . pissed. Couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. Poor chap, I thought. Drowning his sorrows. I’d do the same. Next thing I know, he’s prosing on about our private school. I mean Christ, we’d done two or three schools together, Oxford, not to mention a couple of holidays, yet all he wants to talk about forty years later, on the blower middle of the night, party going on, is how he carved my initials in the staff loo at our private and got me flogged for it. ‘Sorry I carved your initials, Sef.’ All right. He did it. He carved’em. I never doubted he carved ’em. Cocked it up too. He would. Know what he did? Bloody fool put a hyphen between the ‘S’ and the ‘B’ where we don’t have one. I told old Grimble, the headmaster. ‘Why would I put a hyphen in?’ I said. ‘Not how I spell my name,’ I said. ‘No hyphen in it. Look at the school list.’ Not a blind bit of difference, flogged me. Way it goes, you see. No justice. I don’t know I minded much. Everybody flogged everybody in those days. Besides, I wasn’t very nice to him myself. Always ragging him about his people. Father was a con man, you know. Nearly ruined my aunt. Had a go at my mother too. Tried to bed her but she was too fly. Some scheme to build a new airport in Scotland somewhere. He’d squared the locals, all he needed was buy the land, get the f
ormal permission, make a fortune. Cousin of mine owns half Argyll. I asked him about it. Hokum, the whole thing. Extraordinary. I stayed with ’em once. Tarts’ parlour in Ascot. All these crooks hanging about and Magnus calling them ‘sir’. Father tried to get into Parliament once. Pity he didn’t. He’d have been good company. . . .”
Forward again: “. . . banging in the cash. I asked him where he was, he said London but he had to use phone boxes, he was being followed. I said, ‘Whose initials have you been carving now?’ Joke actually, but he didn’t see it. I was sorry about his old man, you see. Didn’t want him moping. Dramatic chap, always has been. Nothing going on in his life unless he’s got some frightful problem on his hands. You could have sold him the Egyptian pyramids long as you said they were falling down. I said, give me the number of your phone, I’ll ring you back. He said somebody must have told me to say that. I said, ‘Absolute bilge, hell are you talking about? Half my friends are on the run.’ He said his father was dead and he was looking at his life for the first time. Fundamental. Always has been. Then he went back to these initials he’d carved. ‘I’m really sorry, Sef.’ I said, ‘Look here, old boy, I always knew it was you and I don’t think we should go through life wearing hairshirts about what we did at our private. Do you need cash? Want a bed? Take a cottage on the estate.’ ‘I’m really sorry, Sef. Really sorry.’ I said, ‘You tell me what I can do, I’ll do it. I’m in the book in London, give me a buzz if I can help.’ Well, I mean damn it, he’d been on for twenty minutes. I put the phone down and half an hour later he’s back. ‘Hullo, Sef. Me again.’ Jean was pretty shirty this time. Thought it was Steggie having a tantrum. ‘Got to talk to you, Sef. Listen to me.’ Well, you can’t ring off on an old chum when he’s down, can you?”