by Daniel Kemp
I looked at what she had found and I too worried. After checking for writing on any photograph I looked at the buildings. There were nine in all. Ranging from an idyllic, solitary standing, white painted farmhouse with a well-stocked barn set in flowing fields of golden corn, to a burnt out shell of what looked to be a small hospital. Some of my best memories of childhood were being around the great man, experiencing the delights he found in sharing his hobbies with me. Painting was, and still is, a dark inscrutability for my mind and talents. I would watch as he mixed his colours on his broad palette to create a captured moment so easily but no matter how hard I tried, the process passed over my capabilities as quickly as that moment faded from view. He had that eye that I've since been told all the great artists had, the ability to instantly recognise beauty in all its varied forms. Instant capture was where he went onto with his photography, no more so than in his dark room in the cellars of Number 16.
The horizontal enlarger that he'd acquired from an RAF friend was always our first topic of conversation under that ghostly red safelight. After one version of how that acquisition came about, or another, he'd allow me to adjust the emerging image by blocking or adding light to it, all before the finale; the immersion in the chemical bath! I never followed in his footsteps in either of those hobbies of his, mine, such as I had, developed in different chemical attractions.
With all that in my mind I sent the photograph of the farmhouse to a fellow farming colleague at the Institute of Agriculture, more in hope than expectation, and the eight others, all depicting derelict buildings in varying degrees of collapse, to a very old and trusted friend still at The Box, or as Sir Michael Riven had called it, Legoland, at Vauxhall. I asked him to keep it all to himself. It wasn't so much Jimmy's warning of not sharing information with our own intelligence community that made me wary, more my reticence in exposing any other family weakness of mine. The following day one of those telephone calls I had made during the week before leaving Harrogate Hall paid off. I'd found someone who knew of Percy. One benefit to come from my time at Eton, then Cambridge and to a lesser extent, the army, had provided was a register of dependable friends that my wealth and influence secured for later life.
Percy had been drafted from the territorial reserve into the armed forces at the outbreak of war in 1939, joining the Royal Engineers on enlistment. His experience of manufacturing improvised bombs, whilst in Spain fighting against the fascists, saw him promoted to the non-commissioned rank of sergeant almost immediately. He saw brief, but powerful action as part of the British Expeditionary Force. It was his company that destroyed many of the transportation routes that allowed the hundreds of thousands of troops to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. All in all Percy's war was a memorable event, the only thing was; it ended abruptly. In June 1942, whilst his regiment was attached to the Eighth Army Group, he was captured at Tobruk as part of the last defending troops when that Libyan port fell to the Axis forces. By that time, however, he had achieved the rank of captain and was, by all accounts, 'par excellence' in sabotage and the effective use of explosives, being mentioned twice in despatches. He spent Christmas Eve that year, his fortieth birthday, as a prisoner of war on the outskirts Naples in Southern Italy. By his forty-first he was ensconced in Oflag 17 POW camp located at Waggum, in central Germany. It was here that he met an old Canadian friend from Spain; Douglas Simmons, who had converted to fascism on being refused re-entry to his homeland when attempting to return to Ottawa. Simmons was an expert in all forms of weapon technology, specialising in one in particular; pernicious life-sapping gas. He was then part of the Waffen SS British Free Corps. It was Douglas who offered Percy another chance at life. Percy took it.
“Percy never fought for the Germans. It was his engineering qualifications that he was selected for, by the Nazis' armaments industry. He spent the last twenty months of the war in the submarine yards at Liepāja, Latvia. By the twenty-seventh of March 1945, the Soviet army had overrun the port and Percy was sent to Moscow.” I was not told until much later why Percy left Ireland.
“He came back to London in early '52, Harry, declaring himself a patriot. Said he spoke the native tongue and knew the whereabouts of secret wigwams. We swallowed it, gulping it down in bucket loads. Nazi advanced submarine technology, combined with Russian strike capabilities and their totally new experiments with nuclear propulsion was what we needed. Not one trickle was permitted to drain into the pond and thereby feed distant cousins. After somewhat hasty deliberations it must be said, he was allowed admittance to the top table, even allowed to sit in the middle of the feast. As far as I can ascertain he never gorged on any main dish though. Ate only from the tiniest side plates around. The information he supplied was solid gold Krugerrand material. Top drawer poshest underwear stuff. Suitable garb for the best dressed orgy in town. We locked him up in a cover name, cover occupation and legend. Then he went and played away in the sixties, with, can you believe it, our blessing! The file was scrubbed virginal clean in '63 at my end with no forwarding on sex parlour addresses. Sorry I can't be more helpful, Harry. Can I ask what scent you're on? But then again one wouldn't want to pry and cause offence, would one. By the by, sport, old Maurice Cavendish was 'C' in the days of the file cleansing. Long said his farewells now though. Looks like a cul-de-sac to me. Unless one has chums floating on lofty clouds, that is, and a way of contacting them! There's one thing that stuck out by a mile in all that I found, and the one thing that I cannot come to terms with. If we used him, as seems highly likely that we did, why was that, and where lay his incentive in doing it? What did we pay him for his crystal maze, Harry?”
Jimmy Mercer sprang back to mind immediately, but not quickly enough to completely obliterate David Haig and the memory his gorgeous secretary had left on me. I knew the owners of The Waterside Inn at Oakley Green, near Windsor, close to David's house, and checked with them when he next had a reservation, figuring that he would hardly entertain working associates near his home. It meant of course that there was no chance of rubbing noses with that goddess of his, but no matter, there are times when pleasure must be put on the back burner. I made a reservation for the same night and as it was late, prepared to turn in.
The present woke me abruptly. George entered the room and announced in a high pitched voice that there was a strange-looking woman, with yellow and red striped hair on the doorstep. I checked my phone to see if I had missed her call, but there had been none from Serena. There had, however, been a message from Joseph a day ago telling me of her revised plan. She was to call on me in London.
I'm sorry, my Lord, but I could not avoid informing her where you are staying.
“There is a very large, equally odd looking black man who has hair down to his knees, with her, Harry. She says she knows you. He looks very glum and angry! Shall I press the button and let her in, or will you have a look first?” George was in a state of near panic as he followed me along the passageway, towards the door.
“Why didn't you let her in, George?” Inside I was smiling but outwardly trying hard to keep a straight face!
“She's in a roaring temper, Harry, and at first I thought they might be robbers. He looked as though he could kick his way in! She was calling you all the names under the sun!”
“You should have pressed the entry button on this system of yours. Should have kept more of the staff on! It was a stupid idea to let most of them go.” I had the door and swung it open.
“So, this is where you're hiding, is it? You are in mighty trouble, Lord bloody Harry Paterson. Tanta here wants to kill you and I won't stand in his way if he carries out his threat. Why did you leave the poor defenceless man in that godforsaken detention centre at Leeds Airport? Have you seen it! Well, no, nor have I, but I can imagine it. Dirty, filthy and just not right for his delicate skills. And it's not nice! Had him released yesterday and flown down here to meet me. Why could you not have done that days ago? Don't answer that now, save your puerile excuses for when I've time for t
hem. There's a cab outside that needs paying. Awful driver, grumpy and morose, made me load my own luggage. Almost had to sit on Tanta's lap all the way from Heathrow. Lucky for you that Joseph told of your location, otherwise I would have shot you when I found you. That reminds me. If you have a gun lying around,” she spoke directly to George who was open-mouthed, struck dumb, “then give it to me and I'll make done with that surly driver! You,” she pointed at George, who was fixed to the ground unable to move a muscle, “pay him, with no tip!”
“Hello, darling. I thought I told you I'd be here! You seem in fine form, I must say. This is George, by the way! Think I've mentioned him before. Your hair is nice. Tanta's creation is it?” I'm usually a man of simple tastes, but there wasn't much that was simple about Serena.
“How was Franco, and Milan?” I enquired, as George was searching his pockets trying to find some money, when miraculously Mrs Squires appeared to both our rescue.
“You must be Miss Serena. His lordship has told us so much about you.” I hadn't, but was not going to correct her. “Come through to the first floor drawing room, much more comfortable than one down here with its hard settees. I'll get the cabbie to unload all your things, then the footman can take them up. We can put Tanta in a bedroom on the third floor. If, of course, that suits everyone?”
“You can put me in the room next to him, very anti Paterson at the moment.” Finally Serena stepped over the threshold and entered. I said nothing, other than “staff, George,” with the haughtiest smile on my face that I could muster. He looked relieved that someone else was now in charge of the situation of a red and yellow devil demanding admittance. I managed a faint - “Sorry” to Tanta as he passed, who merely grunted in reply.
George sat as far away from us as possible as Mrs Squires laid out some tea and coffee on the rectangle table. Tanta was overseeing the passage of bags.
“We have the opening fanfare exclusively ours also the closing finale in Milan, Harry. What an honour! Franco was knocked out with the display, almost wept in delight when I showed him. This winter everyone who is anyone will be wearing my coats and in spring and summer the rest of my entire collection. Crimple is to be the next black! You really must come to all the shows, H. That's not a request, it's a demand.”
“I totally will, my love. I'll bring George along for support. Fancy a peek at some skin and bone size zero models, George?” George simply nodded in agreement. I wasn't sure whether he was just baffled or keen on that undernourished type, but I was sure he hadn't yet recovered.
“Come on now, Harry, redeem yourself. What have you been up to that has kept you away from your divine ranch in Yorkshire? Are not the cows pining their little hearts out for you? Missing your tender, delicate touch first thing in the morning?”
“Bit out of practice on the milking stool but I hope so, as you haven't it seems. Think I'll go sleep in a cowshed when I get home, probably get more fun in there.”
“Fun, as you call it, may come later, H, but only if you fill in all the missing details since I last saw you. If there is one woman involved then you're dead with a capital D.” Serena had a sharp, high cheek-boned face, the sort where expressions are chiselled on and cannot be mistaken from what they are. Her stern, forbidding glare only enforced her determination as I'd seen that look, more than once to my cost.
I told her that I was trying to trace an old family friend who'd gone missing and was thought dead. I hated lying but it was all I could think of.
“I'd be obliged if you were to concentrate more on the living. The dead don't have sex as far as I'm aware, unless you're that way inclined. Now, show me to the room next to Tanta. I'm tired of you, Harry Paterson.”
The next day I spent entirely in Serena's company. She insisted that I accompany her to the two fashion shops she owned in town, and to the model agency where she enquired as to dates available on her sixteen top picks. I did, however, find out that Tanta did not always wear his hair so long. He had served in the Royal Navy. George also turned up some useful information which he shared on my return. The information from Sir Michael Riven, who at one time in his career was serving as head of the Irish desk at the Home Office, had, for a reason that as yet was hidden from me, included the intimacy between Charlie Reilly and Percy Crow. George, by linking that name to one of the guests at the 1981 party, began to shine more light.
“A relative of those Sinn Féin members at the party, Harry, was convicted of an arson attack here in the UK. At court it came out that he was part of the Irish Republic Army. I wouldn't have thought either Maudlin or Phillip knew either of them were caught up with them. Do you?”
We had finished dinner back at Eton Square a few hours since, enjoying a drink and a chat about each of our days when George threw the information into the mix. Serena's previous attention to her phone was instantly diverted.
“What party was that then, Harry? You do seem to have strange people in your life. Yesterday you tell me you're tracking down a dead person, whilst today I learn that a terrorist came to parties at this house once lived in by your father. You have a, what relationship would it be; step-uncle doing research for you, whilst his cook has the kitchen table covered in photo albums. You really don't do lying very well at all.”
Serena had obviously seen Mrs Squires!
“I try my best, Serena, but sometimes it's not good enough, is it? Let me start from the beginning. George here is an undercover spy for Russia and I'm making sure the Patersons' role in espionage is covered over and obliterated. Mrs Squires works for MI6, but she's confused between jam roly-poly and spotted-dick. We have her drugged for safety reasons. How's that?”
“Harry Paterson, you are an incorrigible rogue, and I love you for it. I'll sleep on the left side of the bed tonight, nowhere near your roly-poly. Never mention a spotted-dick again in my presence!” At that she left laughing loudly, with me about to follow quietly behind before being delayed by a worried George.
“What about that information, Harry, what shall I do with it?” astonished, he asked.
“What year was the conviction, George?”
“2003, Harry!”
“In that case neither of them knew. You rest easy and sleep with earmuffs on, George. Might be a mite noisy tonight. Goodnight, old friend,” smiling heartedly, I replied, chasing after my prey.
Chapter Ten: Ringing Phones
All I could conclude was that Percy was working for British intelligence inside the IRA, but if that were true then surely Maudlin would not have said what he did. He would have had high praise instead. Equally true was that nowhere had Maudlin mentioned hearing of Percy in Spain. What on earth was this to do with Paulo and Katherine? By 2003 Percy had been dead for twenty-one years. Was that relevant in any way? Sir Michael had not given me Charlie's date of demise and as I was looking up his phone number to clarify that, the mobile that Jimmy had given me rang. I took it into the bathroom.
Mercer wanted a progress update to see if the ball was up and spinning as he so eloquently put it. I gave him an abridged, censored version of what I had, adding that I believed it all involved Ireland and had nothing to do with his shores. I made no reference to Percy's intelligence alliance with us, if indeed there was one, nor to any specific details about Charlie. He appeared satisfied with what little I gave and hung up, but not before he asked where I was. When I told him, he then asked when I intended to return home to Harrogate, which I found odd in the extreme. I enquired about Katherine and was told that she was engaged elsewhere. He never elaborated. Serena heard the different ringtone and was livid.
“My ex had two phones. Said one was personal and the other for work. Didn't think to tell me that work also meant screwing all the women in the offices where he worked.” Stern and austere had turned to angry, but not at me.
“Mine is for that special thing I'm working on, Serena, but I cannot tell you what that is. You will have to trust in my integrity.”
“Funnily enough I do, Harry, my suspicions of men ar
e something I'm overcoming. No one knew about my ex. I never told father the real reason for the divorce, even though he was one of his closest partners. He did find out later, but not from me, and I'm proud of that! I wasn't trying to listen, H, but I did overhear the name Katherine. If I asked would you tell me who she is, or not?” The frown was etching lines into her smooth forehead.
“It's complicated, Serena, but she's George's sister. I once had a brief fling with her. A one night thing, you understand. She's the one who told of this dead relative that I'm chasing.”
“Strange choice of word that, chasing, or was it deliberate, Harry?”
“No, perhaps the wrong term to use. Bit too early in the morning for my brain to function. In which part of your father's financial empire did your ex work, Serena? I've never brought up the matter of your past marriage as you've never mentioned it, but now you have, well, I thought I'd ask.”
“Before I even consider answering your question, H, answer mine. Do you still want to plant the Paterson coat of arms alongside this Katherine chick?” She had a divine way with colloquialisms that her predominately Portuguese language accentuat ed. Chick, indeed!
“We keep no chicks on the estate, Serena, nor do I see any chickens through my binoculars and come to that, nor do I want to see any, my love.” A huge smile lit her face
“You are a sweetie! As you have answered my question, I'll answer yours. He was office based, in New York, but travelled the world in dealing with the shipping company and all transportation issues that ensued in that operation. There were seven employees in total at the New York branch, four being women. All of whom he screwed. I got it from the escória de's, that's Portuguese for whore, mouth when I used that other phone of his, returning the last call. It was the only call on there, as he'd scrubbed the rest off. Forgot that one though, or was too blasé to bother. I trod on his phone as I got out of a cab at the companies offices. I stood there, staring at it for a while as it amazed me just what satisfying damage heels can do. It disintegrated into tiny slivers of plastic, reminding me of bubbles bursting on the sidewalk. I was both impressed by what I'd done and crushed, like the phone, by what he'd done to my life. When I got to the company office I demanded all four of the cellulars from the as putas, whores, then checked for his number. Sure enough, it was on them all.