‘The day turned out rather well, I think,’ he murmured.
‘We’re not here to talk about the weather,’ said Danby. Even sitting beside the guy made him nervous.
‘No, we’re here to talk about Tube Alloys and our friend here at the Cavendish Laboratory.’
‘That’s right.’ Danby knew both the Nazis and the Russians wanted the information so badly their teeth were aching and he had it, all bundled up in a skinny little German Jew named Fuchs whom he had a couple of things on. Klaus Fuchs was working on the Tube Alloys thing in Birmingham but, by the sounds of it, they were about to send him to the States to join the big boys on the Manhattan Project. Fuchs was worth his weight in gold. He smiled at that. It was pretty funny when you knew the people involved. Danby looked straight ahead as he spoke to Blunt. ‘You and your people still interested?’
‘Yes.’
‘At the price I suggested?’
‘I believe so, yes.
‘Good, then we’ll go ahead. I can have what you need in Geneva pretty soon.’
‘Let me know the dates and I’ll have a representative there.’
‘Good man,’ said Danby. He held out his hand to seal the deal. Blunt looked at it like it was a dead fish being offered. He stood.
‘I have a graduate lesson in fifteen minutes,’ Blunt said, standing without shaking hands. ‘Poussin. I really shouldn’t be late.’
‘Then you better toddle off, then, shouldn’t you Tony old fellow?’ Blunt winced. Danby smiled; he liked playing the American oaf without any culture. He wondered what the manicured little prick would think if he knew the old man had a Poussin in the dining room back home. Landscape with Polyphemus, picked up from the Russians by Armand Hammer, years ago, then laid off on the old man. A bunch of naked Greeks standing around a volcano. Probably give Blunt a hard-on in his grey flannels. To hell with it. Why make the jerk jealous? He waved to Blunt as he went back up towards the College gates, wondering how long somebody like that was going to last in the spy business. He looked at his watch and stood up himself. He had a plane to catch.
Chapter Twenty-four
Twenty minutes later the first of the beaters arrived at Tweedsmuir’s door and a few minutes after that the local constable appeared. Jane and Angus saw them arrive, watching through a broken slat in one of the jalousie-style shutters and the grime-encrusted window it covered.
‘This is crazy,’ Jane whispered. ‘We’re trapped in here. We should have run when we had the chance.’
Angus peeked out through their small spy hole. He nodded. ‘I’m afraid you’re right, lass; there’s a dozen men out there and they don’t appear to be taking no for an answer.’
Angus began moving about the dark, dank room, looking for some other exit. He found a ladder against the back wall, fixed in place on metal brackets. He began to climb. Jane went to the door leading into the kitchen and put her ear to it. She could hear the raised voice of one man and she knew it in an instant. Occleshaw, like some vindictive ghost haunting her footsteps, refusing to give up. Tweedsmuir’s calm voice answered the man carefully, refusing to be led into an argument with the perpetually angry man from Special Branch. A third voice joined, Scots, and from the countryside by the sound of it; probably the chief constable for the district.
‘Come now, Mr Occleshaw,’ said the chief constable. ‘This is no ordinary man you’re speaking to. A little respect is in order.’
‘I don’t give a bloody fuck who he is, man; he’s getting in the way of an official investigation by Special Branch and if he continues to interfere I’ll fucking have the little Jew-lover thrown in the fucking Tower. Do. You. Understand?’ He spaced the last three words out, enunciating carefully.
‘I’m simply asking for an explanation of why you want to ransack my house,’ said Tweedsmuir evenly.
‘And I want an explanation as to why your Lordship or whatever you are has two plates drying in your dish rack and why there’s enough eggshells in your rubbish tip to feed an army.’
‘I had breakfast with my friend Richard,’ said Tweedsmuir. ‘He’d been out for an early morning stroll about the moors.’
‘Richard?’
‘Richard Hannay.’ Tweedsmuir’s mysterious friend again.
‘Who is he?’ asked Occleshaw. Jane thought she could hear the sound of the policeman’s pencil scratching. Behind her Angus continued climbing the ladder.
‘As I said, a friend. From Rhodesia.’
‘A colonial,’ said Occleshaw.
‘I was born in Scotland; by your standards I assume that makes me a colonial too.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Occleshaw under his breath. ‘More fucking Scottish Independents.’
‘Mind your tongue in my house, sir; I’ll take your insolence but I’m damned if I’ll take your blasphemy.’
‘Janey, lass! Here!’ hissed Angus behind her. She turned and looked up the ladder. A bright square of sunlight was cascading into the storeroom. At the top of the ladder Angus had found a trapdoor that led up to the roof. Realising that whatever Tweedsmuir did, Occleshaw would eventually win the day over the small man’s protests, she scurried across the dirt floor and began climbing the ladder. Angus boosted himself out onto the roof and Jane followed a moment or so later. Angus eased the trapdoor shut. They were on the back side of the old slate roof, no more than three or four feet from the peak, barely out of sight of the beaters and uniformed police below. They weren’t much better off than they had been in the storeroom.
Angus gestured silently and began to edge along the slope of the roof, taking care to keep his head below the peak. On this side of the roof Jane could see down to the little stream that gurgled along beside the mill and the broad trough that took the water over the mill wheel to the race beyond. She quickly saw what Angus intended: the trough ran directly beside the back of the house, blocking the view from the rough lawn and the vegetable garden on the other side – the view from the kitchen window and the place where all the cops seemed to be congregated. There was a lead downpipe visible at the corner of the house and if they could climb down that they could get into the water trough and travel across the opening between it and the mill. Dangerous, but just barely possible.
Jane followed Angus’s every move, careful not to put too much weight on the slippery roof slates. Knock one down and it would all be over. Finally Angus reached the corner of the roof, took one look back over his shoulder at Jane and then eased himself over the edge and made his way down the old lead downspout. She reached the corner of the roof herself and looked over; Angus had made it to the water trough and was just turning himself into it. Jane peeked around the corner and saw several of the beaters talking together and lighting each other’s cigarettes. There was a lot of laughter going on, as though the whole thing was no more than a game. Perhaps it was just that for them, a day’s outing on the moor and perhaps a sovereign to boot, but they hadn’t seen the woman on the train with her eye poked out. Jane frowned, thinking of the dowdy young woman in the crushed cloth cap and the sagging knee stockings. Who was she and why had she been in Jane’s bedroom in the first place? It hadn’t made any sense then and it made even less sense now. She shook her head; this whole escapade had been like that: none of the puzzle pieces seemed to fit.
She turned away, lay flat on the roof and let her legs slide over and down, wrapping her ankles around the drainpipe. It was remarkably firm and she had no trouble reaching down to grip it in both hands and shimmy down to the mill trough. Following Angus’s lead she rolled herself into the trough and began to crawl along it, keeping flat on her belly. Thankfully the trough hadn’t been used in years and was dry, its interior nothing more than a catch-all for windblown leaves. After a few minutes she was in the lee of the mill wall and scuttled forward more openly. She reached the end of the trough and found her way to the mill wheel’s axle hole and wriggled through it, tumbling into a bed of old and dusty chaff inside.
‘This way,’ hissed Angus. She followed him
across the floor to a door that hung half off its hinges. She peered outside and saw the dovecote. ‘Come on,’ said Angus and began to ease out through the gap in the doorway.
Jane gripped him by the arm. ‘Wait.’ Looking back the way they’d come she saw a scuffed line of footprints through the chaff leading from the axle hole to the doorway. They might as well have painted a sign. Jane took a moment, went back to the axle and the huge old stone then came back to the door, scattering more chaff over their footsteps as she came. When she was done there was no sign they’d been there at all. This time when Angus went out the door she went with him.
The ground outside the mill and leading to the old dovecote was cobbled stone, where no footprints would show. It was also screened from the house and the garden by the bulk of the mill. Quickly Angus sprinted across the small section of open ground between the two buildings, making his way to the rear of the dovecote. The rear wall was made of broken old stones and covered with vines. It took no more than a minute or so to scramble up to the roof, where they collapsed behind a narrow parapet. Looking around, Jane spotted a trapdoor in the floor. She’d seen enough of her friends flying pigeons in New York to know what it was for; the pigeons would be kept below the roof in protected wire cages and brought up here to be flown. She prayed that Tweedsmuir had a lock on the downstairs door; if he didn’t, and Occleshaw decided to search, they would be trapped as surely as they’d been in the storeroom.
It was the middle of the afternoon before Occleshaw’s men finished their search. At one point Jane was sure that they were going to search the dovecote roof but apparently the inside of the old construction was so decrepit they only gave it a cursory look. Eventually, with the chief constable making effusive apologies, they left, cutting back through the small woods near the bridge and making their way across the open moorland again. Another half hour passed and then Jane heard a shrill whistle from below. She looked cautiously over the narrow parapet of the dovecote and saw Tweedsmuir standing on the rough lawn, his fingers on either side of his mouth as he whistled a second time. Once again Jane found the modern, almost youthful gesture didn’t fit in with the man’s aristocratic, slightly antiquated personality.
‘Halloo!’ he called, shading his eyes with one hand and glancing up at the dovecote. ‘Are you up there?’
Jane stood up and waved.
Tweedsmuir smiled. ‘Good show,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d find a way up.’
‘Can we get down through the trapdoor?’ she called.
‘You’ll get filthy, I’m afraid; there’s a great deal of birdlime and detritus from the days when it was in use.’
‘We’ll come down as we came up,’ said Angus, climbing to his feet. He waved at Tweedsmuir and then turned to the rear wall. A few minutes later they were standing beside the small man on his lawn, brushing off their clothes. Jane took out the cigarette case Tweedsmuir had given her and gratefully lit one with one of the Swan Vestas; she’d craved a smoke more than once while they were up on the roof but hadn’t dared light one.
‘You’re sure he’s gone?’ asked Angus, looking around anxiously.
‘I gave the pompous ass enough time,’ said Tweedsmuir, his face darkening as he thought of Occleshaw. ‘If he was going to double back he would have done it by now.’ He took a packet of twenty Senior Service out of the pocket of his jacket and lit one with a small gold lighter he took out of his waistcoat. He inhaled then coughed lightly.
‘I’m sorry if I didn’t give you much time but I never thought he’d inspect the house itself. A very modern policeman, I’m afraid.’ Tweedsmuir smiled tautly and took another draw on the cigarette. ‘There was a time when a gentleman’s word would have been enough.’
‘Occleshaw’s no gentleman and he wouldn’t recognise one in a million years,’ said Jane. ‘And we should be the ones to say we’re sorry. We’ve interrupted your day, I’m afraid.’
‘A welcome interruption it’s been,’ said Tweedsmuir. ‘When one is writing one’s dreary old memoirs one looks for the slightest diversion, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m pretty sure they’re not dreary,’ said Jane, smiling.
Tweedsmuir shrugged. ‘Time will tell, Miss Todd.’ He smiled sadly. ‘My friend Mr Wells decries the fact that he will apparently be remembered for little amusements like his Time Machine and War of the Worlds more than for his Outline of History.’ The little man laughed. ‘I venture to say that the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder is better remembered for his love of trout fishing in Lake Como than for his studies of Herodotus.’ He shrugged again. ‘It’s all a matter of accident, you see; I’ve come to believe that much of life is like that. One’s birth and death and everything in between all hinge on the flip of a coin, I’m afraid.’ He glanced speculatively at Angus. ‘Although I suppose that’s no way for the son of a Free Kirk minister to speak.’
‘Och,’ said Angus and left it at that.
Tweedsmuir field-stripped his cigarette and threw a few bits of tobacco into the air, judging the wind. ‘The breeze has dropped,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I think I’ll take my rod and see what our old friend Salmo trutta is up to this evening.’ He glanced up at the sky. Jane knew it would be dusk in an hour or so; the brown trout would be coming up to feed at the bridge a few hundred yards away. ‘I shall be gone for at least an hour or so, perhaps a little more if I remain by the water enjoying a cigarette or two before I go back to my work. If my motor car, which is in the garage with the key in the ignition, were to be stolen I’d have no one to blame but myself, would I?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ said Jane.
‘Good then, that’s settled,’ he said. He shook each of their hands in turn and then went back into the house. He appeared again a moment later with a fishing creel slung at his waist and a nine-foot bamboo rod in his hand. On his head he was wearing an old and battered Tyrolean hat pin-cushioned with a score of trout flies. Jane thought she could make out the flashy colours of a Wizard and a Silver Doctor. Tweedsmuir paused, gave them a brief smile and a wave and then he was gone, disappearing down the narrow path through the stand of trees between the house and the stream, slipping into the shadows like a ghost.
‘What a strange man,’ said Jane, watching him go.
‘Aye,’ said Angus. ‘But a good man for all that. He did’na have to take us in and he could have handed us over to yon Okkey if he wanted, easy as pie.’
‘Maybe he really did want one last adventure,’ said Jane, looking towards the woods. ‘Him and his friend Hannay, whoever he is.’
‘Well, Janey girl, we’re still in the midst of our own wee adventure and we’ve had the offer of transportation if I’m not mistaken. We can put a lot of miles between ourselves and Mr Occleshaw if we hurry.’
‘All right,’ said Jane and they headed for the garage.
Tweedsmuir’s car turned out to be a huge old canvas-topped McLaughlin Buick in robin’s egg blue and equipped with American-style left-hand drive. The top was down and Jane had no idea how to put it up. She got behind the big, polished wood wheel and quickly scanned the dashboard. Angus climbed in beside her.
He gave Jane a nervous look. ‘You sure you know how to drive this great boat?’ he asked.
‘Stick to your oars, Angus.’ She turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared into life. She tapped experimentally on the accelerator a few times, put her foot on the clutch and manhandled the gearstick into reverse. ‘Hang on,’ she said and eased the big car out of the garage and into the daylight.
She turned the car around in the little yard behind the house, put the big Dayton balloon tyres into the ruts of the road and gave the car a little gas. They moved forward easily, the tyres absorbing the uneven surface, and a moment later they were crossing the bridge over the stream they’d passed on their way to the farmhouse several hours before. There was no sign of Tweedsmuir either up- or downstream.
‘He must be fishing in some other spot,’ said Jane, raising her voice over the heavy rumbling of the Buick
’s powerful engine. ‘I wanted to give him a last wave goodbye.’
‘Drive,’ said Angus. ‘Before Occleshaw decides to come back.’ Jane put her foot on the accelerator.
They drove for hours, heading directly north as far as it was possible on the winding, back country roads. Angus found a Gall and Inglis Safety Map of Scotland in the room-sized glove compartment, showing all roads in different colours, rated for their drivability. Also in the glove compartment was a wax-paper-wrapped packet of cheese-and-onion sandwiches, a large chased-silver flask of The Macallan’s single malt and a small, flat, ornately scrolled, silver-plated automatic pistol with mother-of-pearl handgrips.
‘Well armed for a retired publisher and man of letters, wouldn’t you say, Janey?’ Angus asked. Jane just nodded and kept on driving. Angus handed the gun to Jane. ‘You should have this, Janey,’ he said. ‘It’s a wee lady’s gun.’ Tweedsmuir, bless his dark and fathomless little heart, had meant them to be well fed and well armed. She took the weapon with one hand and stuffed it into the deep pocket of her oversized jacket.
They continued north as night fell, up out of the moor country and into the region of coal pits and small industrial towns that ringed the dark smudge of Glasgow like remora around the teeth of a shark. They ran beside great craggy fells and lochs that were miles long. Full darkness came and Jane turned on the blackout-shuttered headlamps, faint slits of illumination barely lighting up the road ahead. They drove this way steadily, wondering how soon they’d come to a roadblock resulting from the necessity of Tweedsmuir reporting his car as ‘stolen.’ She smiled as she drove, wondering whether Occleshaw would believe him or not, secretly hoping that he wouldn’t.
The names of towns flew by as they crawled steadily north and now slightly west across the map. Carluke, Newmain, Kilem, Glen Fallon and Glenorchy, Loch Broom and Loch Mayne. Occasionally they’d see the stark remains of a castle silhouetted by the moon or reflected in the still black waters of a loch but mostly they saw dark hills and villages sleeping through the soundless night.
An American Spy Page 24