by Len Deighton
Behind me, the toilet door creaked softly. In the mirror I saw it open just enough for someone to see inside. I turned. Perhaps I would have been fast enough, and even heavy enough, to handle one such man, but there were three of them. They were motorcycle cops: giants in boots, breeches, black leather coats and shiny crash helmets. I thrashed about, until a butt in the face with a helmet, and a nicely timed kick behind the knee, tumbled me to the floor. As they pulled me to my feet they had me pinioned so tight I could hardly breathe.
There were two other men behind the cops. They were small, white-faced men, with tight-fitting overcoats and expensive gloves. One of them bent down to pick up my spectacles. He examined them to be sure they were not cracked and then placed them on my face. The other civilian advanced upon me, clutching a handful of paperwork, as a priest might brandish a crucifix at a malevolent Lucifer.
I protested as much as a man can protest when he has a blue uniformed arm choking the life out of him, and the hard corner of a sink prising his vertebrae apart.
And they were still crowding into the place: autoroute police, motor-cyclists, civilians and helicopter pilots. ‘Is this the one?’ a voice asked, and they shuffled about until the person questioned could get a look at me.
He must have nodded, for another voice said, ‘You know that under French law you can be held for questioning for up to forty-eight hours without charges being preferred against you.’
I was gasping for air. I got my arm free, and tried to loosen the arm round my throat. My captor mistook this for an attempt to escape. He gave me a kidney punch, nicely calculated to be less than lethal.
Now I was bent almost double. I could no longer see any of the men. ‘This is a murder charge,’ said another voice. ‘Mrs Helen Bishop, alias Melodie Page, murdered in flat seven, twenty-three Victoria Terrace Gardens, London South-West. It’s all here … French magistrate’s signature, préfecture, as well as the extradition … You just cool it. We’re taking you to Lyon airport, and then to London. You just cool it, or I’ll beat you unconscious personally. Got it?’
It was the voice of Colonel Schlegel. The grip on my throat was loosened so that I could answer.
‘OK, OK,’ I croaked.
‘Get the cuffs on the bastard,’ said Schlegel. ‘And if he looks like he’s even thinking of escaping, beat him senseless.’
They let me straighten. There was a ghoulish smile on Schlegel’s face. If he was trying to convince these French policemen that this wasn’t a way of getting a colleague out of trouble, he was overdoing it.
I took a few deep breaths. Over Schlegel’s shoulder I could see through the open door into the dining-room beyond. Pina had gone.
11
‘All you do is complain,’ Schlegel told me.
Dawlish was pouring tea and cutting into a fruit cake.
‘He’s simply trying to irritate you, my dear Schlegel. He knows that that was the only way to do it.’ Dawlish turned to me and smiled, challenging me to tell him a better way of getting away from the quarry, and the corpses, and the problems arising therefrom.
I couldn’t. I took the slice of cake Dawlish offered.
‘You moved quickly,’ I said. Schlegel bit into his piece of fruit cake and smiled to show his appreciation of my grudging praise.
He said, ‘Your friend – the Princess – came through with a description of the two men, the make and year of the car and the registration number. I’m telling you, she had me high-tailing down that highway in the police chopper before I was fully awake.’
My mouth was hardly open before Dawlish answered my question. ‘Colonel Schlegel had the foresight to leave a contact number with her,’ he said.
I scowled. Colonel Schlegel was too bloody fond of leaving contact numbers, and what he described as cutting through British red tape and deviousness. It was bloody dangerous.
‘She was worried about you,’ said Dawlish. ‘I think the Princess is straight.’
‘A pity she wasn’t with Schlegel and that French heavy-glove squad when they found me.’
‘We didn’t know about the quarry and the shooting at that time,’ Schlegel explained. ‘We thought we were picking up the hoods who were snatching you.’
‘Well, when the cops find the bodies, Colonel Schlegel is going to have a lot of explaining to do,’ I told them.
‘Not so,’ said Dawlish. ‘We had one of our people go up to the quarry last night – no corpses, no guns; nothing.’
‘Champion has cleaned up the garbage,’ said Schlegel. ‘No more will be heard.’
They had it all worked out. There was no arguing with them. And anyway, I had nothing to add. I walked across to the window. I rubbed the condensation away with my fingertip, and looked out. This was really gracious living. From the window I could see a few hundred acres of Wiltshire and Sir Dudley’s new Bentley parked at the east wing entrance. Did the family know what we used the west wing for? Did the gardener, who watched them bury the Telex cables and the scrambler phone lines under his five-hundred-year-old lawn, know? Did he think we needed the eight Yagi aerials for TV, and the double-glazing to keep us warm?
I turned round to look at them. ‘But why would Pina Baroni take a movie camera up there?’ I said. ‘That’s what I still fail to understand.’
‘Pin your ears back,’ said Schlegel, waving a piece of fruit cake at me. ‘Pina Baroni took nothing up there. She was snatched, the same way you were.’ He bit into the fruit cake and chewed it for a long time before swallowing.
‘Are you sure?’ I said.
‘Sure, we’re sure,’ said Schlegel, and Dawlish nodded.
Schlegel said, ‘This Pina Baroni was wearing the identical fur coat to one that your guy was wearing. Right?’
‘Identical,’ I agreed.
‘Not just a coincidence,’ said Schlegel. ‘She was going to get killed in that coat. Killed by you.’ He pointed at me in case I needed a little help in following the conversation. ‘Killed by you when you mistook her for the gunny in the same coat.’
‘No,’ I said calmly.
‘Don’t give me no,’ said Schlegel. ‘The movie camera was there to film it happen.’
‘Why?’
Schlegel said, ‘We know Champion killed Melodie Page … Oh, sure, he gave you all that crap about us conspiring to frame him – but he did it. So he dreams up the counterploy – and it has just that kind of poetic touch that a psycho like Champion likes – he was going to have you kill Pina Baroni, and with enough evidence to make it stick.’
‘Why?’ I said again.
Dawlish interrupted Schlegel’s act. ‘He’d threaten us. He’d offer a deal: we forget about the Page murder, and he lets you off the hook.’
Well, it did have the kind of crazy effrontery that had once been Champion’s hallmark. ‘It’s the film camera gimmick that I find so difficult,’ I said. ‘The kind of blurred image you’d get on 16 mm film on a winter’s day doesn’t compare with eyewitnesses, or telephoto stills, that a court of law would want.’
‘Court of law!’ said Schlegel. ‘Don’t be so dumb. Champion knows it would never get that far. He wanted something that would capture the imagination. He’d be threatening to give it to one of the US networks or a TV agency. He was more interested in grabbing attention than getting a conviction.’
‘It would have given us a headache,’ said Dawlish, as if regretful that the department had lost such an employee.
‘But why Pina Baroni?’ I said. I was still not convinced. ‘Why murder his sister-in-law? Why not a movie of me killing just anybody?’
‘We thought about that,’ said Schlegel, tapping the papers on the desk. ‘Sure why Pina Baroni, his sister-in-law? Finally we figured it this way. The girl hates Champion – really hates him. She’s convinced that after Champion was arrested he talked. She thinks he betrayed her brother Marius to the Gestapo – you know all about that, I guess.’
‘I know all about it,’ I said. ‘She’s crazy. I saw Champion arrested at N
ice station. And that was hours after Marius was picked up.’ I thought about it. ‘Yes, hours after.’
‘It’s water under the bridge now,’ said Schlegel. ‘She hates Champion’s guts, and Champion divorcing her sister didn’t help.’
‘Marrying her sister didn’t help,’ I corrected him. ‘There was a time when Pina Baroni was crazy about Champion.’
‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ said Schlegel.
‘You should write that down, Colonel,’ I said. ‘It has a fine ring to it.’
Schlegel was never slowed by sarcasm. He said, ‘And the Baroni girl killed men in the war, she got a medal for it. So she’s not the kind of doll who is going to sit at home, sticking pins into clay figures. I mean, this babe is going to do it!’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘you’ve told me why she might kill Champion, but I’m still waiting to hear why Champion would want to kill her. This is someone we were both with in the war. Why her? Why not a stranger?’
Dawlish said, ‘Any news agency would drag out all that stuff about you and Pina Baroni in the war. First they find out she was in the resistance, and then they find out you were with her. Then they start asking what work you are doing nowadays … It would cause us maximum embarrassment. It was just another perfect Champion touch.’
‘But not quite enough,’ I protested. ‘Not quite enough.’
‘Don’t baby him along,’ Schlegel told Dawlish. Turning to me he added, ‘If you’d killed some broad you’d never met, you’d clam up and put your mind in neutral. You’re a pro, and your training would make you proof against any kind of working-over the press, the TV or the law could give you. But if you’d killed this Baroni woman – especially in error – you’re going to be full of guilt and remorse. With you in that kind of mood, a prosecutor presses the right buttons, and any guy will sing.’
He was right, and I didn’t need to tell him so. In that moment any last doubt I’d had about Champion killing the Page girl disappeared completely. Champion was a dangerous bastard. As devious as ever and not too fussy about who got hurt, as long as it wasn’t him.
‘It all fits,’ I admitted.
‘Good,’ said Schlegel. There was an indefinable change of atmosphere in the room. I felt as though I’d passed some sort of examination. I looked at Dawlish soon enough to see the tiny nod of his head. Schlegel looked down at the piece of fruit cake he was eating. ‘Hell!’ he said angrily. ‘I don’t eat fruit cake.’ He stubbed it into the ashtray like an old cigar butt. ‘You know I don’t eat fruit cake,’ he complained to Dawlish.
‘I’m afraid we’re all a little on edge today,’ said Dawlish. He bent to pick up cake crumbs and put them into the ashtray.
Schlegel grunted a sort of apology and picked up a couple of crumbs.
I sat down in the red leather chair that is usually reserved for visitors. I closed my eyes for a moment. Schlegel mistook my weariness for anguish.
He said, ‘You don’t need to lose any sleep about the guy you knocked off. A real expensive hit-man out of Zürich. “The Corsican”, a rub-out artist, who probably cooled more guys than you’ve had hot dinners. For my money, you’d get a medal for that job you did. A medal; not a murder rap.’
‘Well, I didn’t know I was getting either,’ I said.
‘Keep your voices down,’ said Dawlish primly. ‘These wretched guns. If you’d obeyed your orders about guns we’d not have to be sending chaps up to the quarry at dead of night, and faking up a lot of extradition paperwork for Paris.’
‘If I’d obeyed orders about guns, I’d be D.E.D.,’ I said.
‘If they trace that handgun back to you, I’ll make you wish you were,’ said Dawlish.
‘Just tell me your problem,’ I said wearily. ‘You want this in my file? Give me a sheet of paper, I’ll be pleased to oblige you. Anything else you want – crimes you need a confession for? Typewriters missing from the inventory? Petty-cash slips without counterfoils? I’ll make it all right in one bumper-size confession.’
I sank back in the chair and shook my shoes off. ‘I’m very tired,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it would be easier on all of us if you told me what you had in mind, instead of straining to pretend that you’re being hit by a succession of brilliant ideas.’
The brevity of the glance they exchanged in no way lessened its conspiratorial quality. ‘There’s a chance to stick a transistor radio up Champion’s arse,’ explained Schlegel.
I knew enough about Schlegel’s allegorical syntax to guess that I was cast as the radio. ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ I said, ‘I’ll stay with the murder charge.’
‘We haven’t got time for comic backchat,’ said Dawlish.
‘Don’t look at me,’ I told him. ‘I’m the straight man.’
Dawlish said, ‘Of course, Major Champion will guess that charging you with the girl’s murder was just a device …’
‘… but he might believe that gunning down Fabre was too rich for the department’s blood,’ said Schlegel. ‘Got me?’
‘No,’ I said.
There was a long silence. Finally, it was Schlegel who spoke. They were going to save Dawlish for the replay.
‘Right now, you’re charged with the murder of Melodie Page. OK, it’s very phoney, but we think we could exploit it. We could leak that to Champion, and make it sound convincing. Right?’
‘Carry on,’ I said. I opened the VIP cigar box and lit one of Dawlish’s Monte Cristos. Employees were not permitted access to the hospitality, but this wasn’t the right time to remind me.
‘Suppose we let the charge ride,’ said Schlegel.
I pretended to search my pockets for matches. Dawlish sighed and lit it for me. I smiled up at him.
‘Suppose?’ said Schlegel, to be sure I was paying attention.
‘Yes, suppose,’ I said. He need not have worried; I hadn’t paid such close attention to the spoken word since the day I got married.
Dawlish said, ‘You’re here, accused of the murder of the Page girl …’
Schlegel said, ‘You break bail. You go to France, and ask Champion for a job with his organization. What do you think?’
‘You know there’s no bail on a murder charge,’ I said. ‘What are you two setting me up for?’
‘No, well, break out of custody, then,’ amended Schlegel.
‘He’s been seeing too many Bogart movies,’ I told Dawlish.
‘Well?’ said Schlegel.
‘It would have to make better sense to Champion,’ I said. ‘If a murder charge was brought against me, and then dismissed on some technicality – he’d see the hand of the department in that. Then if the department puts me out to grass … That might sound right to him.’
‘Well, that fits in with what we know,’ said Dawlish, and I realized too late that the two of them had deliberately led me into the planning of their crackpot idea. Dawlish hurried on. ‘Champion has a contact with a contact with a contact – you know what I mean. He’d know what was happening to you if you were in Wormwood Scrubs sometime in the next two months.’
Obviously that meant a remand prisoner. ‘Just don’t ask me to plead guilty,’ I said.
‘No, no, no,’ said Dawlish. The history of the department was littered with the corpses of men who had been persuaded to plead guilty, with the promise of a quiet trial and a release on ‘unsound mind’ clauses. ‘No, no. You’ll plead not guilty.’
‘And none of those dumb little creeps from the legal department,’ I said. ‘You manufacture the flaw in the charge but I’ll find some crooked lawyer who will discover it and think it was him.’
‘Agreed,’ said Schlegel.
‘I’ll go through the motions,’ I said. ‘But don’t rely on it. Champion is a shrewdie: he’ll compromise. He’ll find me some bloody job with his potato farm in Morocco, and sit back and laugh his head off.’
‘We don’t think so,’ said Dawlish. ‘We’ve been through the reports he sent to London, in the war. He had a high opinion of your judgement then, a
nd he probably still has it. He could use someone like you right now. He’s under pressure to increase the Intelligence flow back to Cairo, or so we think.’
Schlegel said, ‘But you see why we’re worried about the Baroni woman. If this was all a set-up … if she was working with Champion. If you read the entrails wrong – then …’ He ran a forefinger across his throat. ‘There will be some corner of a foreign field …’
‘I didn’t know you were interested in poetry, Colonel,’ I said.
12
It was not the first time that I’d been in Wormwood Scrubs prison. In 1939, at the outbreak of war, the prisoners had been evacuated and the prison building housed Military Intelligence personnel. A few coats of paint and improvements to the plumbing had not changed the place very much. There was still the faint odour of urine that reached every cell and office. And there was still the resonance that made every sound vibrate and echo, so that at night I was kept awake by the coughing of some prisoner on the upstairs floor. And there was still the same strangled silence: a thousand throats waiting to scream in unison.
‘And no reason why you shouldn’t have toiletries – decent soap, after-shave and bath lotion – and your own pyjamas and a dressing-gown …’ He looked round my cell as if he’d never seen inside one before.
‘You’re not defending some East-End ponce,’ I said quietly. ‘You work on my defence. Let me worry about the deodorants.’
‘Just so, just so,’ he said. Michael Moncrieff, he called himself, a name just as artificial as ‘Michael the Mouth’, by which he was known to his gangland clients. Men like him fight their way out of the gutters of every slum in Europe. He was a tall man with broad muscular shoulders, and a face pock-marked and scarred. And yet time had softened those marks, and now his thick white hair and wrinkled face could easily persuade you that he was the genial country lawyer that perhaps he’d liked to have been.
He reached into the waistcoat pocket of his expensive bird’s-eye suit and found a gold pocket-watch. He looked at it for long enough to let me know that he was annoyed with me, but not so long that he might be deprived of the rest of the fee I’d promised him.