The Conduct of Major Maxim

by Gavin Lyall

  It was dark now, but warmer than when they had left the coast nearly two hours before, and the air tasted like something breathed through a hot towel. The weather was going to break, and noisily.

  As they walked through the lamplight of the Ropewalk, Maxim noticed a small incised plaque to Lord Macaulay, who had lived there in the 1840s.

  "That's the bastard who loused up my promotion chances. "

  "What?" Agnes stopped and peered.

  "He once wrote: 'Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.' "

  She chuckled. "Did you run across that yourself?"

  "Oh no. There've always been plenty of kindly brother officers to bring it to my attention. We're a very well-read Army these days. "

  George's rooms were on the first floor; they had the traditional stolidity of a steak and kidney pie and were much the same colour. Annette had never dared touch the dark panelling that George's family had put in eighty years before, nor even most of the ponderous mahogany furniture and the lovingly detailed pictures of dead hares and partridges surrounded by dewy vegetables. She had counter-attacked with bright lampshades and curtains, but she hadn't won.

  Agnes knew the room and went straight for the telephone. George was sitting at one end of a vast empty dining table, with a little oasis of bottles, coffee pot and cheeseboard at hiselbow.

  "Ah," he greeted Maxim; "do I see you refreshed by two days of country air? Revived? Refulgent? More to the point, do I see yourepentant? Your lad's really done it this time. Port or brandy?"

  "Just coffee, please. Who got shot?"

  "The man in hospital hasn't been named, but he isn't your Corporal. It happened around seven o'clock, at a place called Neptune Court. Do you know it? No? I thought you knew Rotherhithe like your own back garden. "

  "I don't have a back garden. "

  "Neither does Neptune Court. It's a block of council flats, probably one of those redbrick Edwardian things, with a court in the middle and a service road down the back. Front doors • open onto long balconies with iron railings covered in damp washing and snotty little kids dribbling on your head through the bars."

  Maxim grinned, surprised less by George's attitude than by his knowledge of such parts of London. They were certainly Rotherhithe blocks he was describing; Maxim had seen them.

  "It happened in the service road. Five or six shots. Neighbours saw one man drive away and it looked as if he was hurt. Another one running in the opposite direction. "

  "Running?"

  "They said so, but from the blood marks the fuzz think he could be wounded. "

  "What about the guns?"

  "I do notknow about the guns, Harry. I can't be ringing up Rotherhithe nick asking for details. That would just establish the very connection I'm hoping-despite your assistance-to ' avoid. All I'm giving you is from the radio and the PA tape. But six shots and a man in intensive care, " he added, "makes it reasonably certain that some friend of yours was involved."

  Agnes came over and George handed her a gin and tonic.

  'Thanks. Our people have been in touch with the police, justchecking to see if there could be a terrorist element. Thatwould be quite normal. They've got the one in hospital down as Hans-Heinz Lemke, but they aren't entirely convinced. They're checking him out. He's about thirty-five, dark, five foot eleven, eleven and a half stone. Shoes made in Germany -West."

  "Did they say anything about the guns?" Maxim asked. George gave a heavy sigh.

  "There were two left at the scene." She glanced at a piece of paper."A Sauerof 7.65 millimetre calibre and a Walther of short 9 millimetre or.380. Is that right?"

  Maxim nodded.

  "The Sauerhad been fired, probably twice. The other one wasn't fired. And they've picked 3.38 Special out of Lemke's liver."

  "That could be Blagg," Maxim said. "It was a.38 Special he had at Bad Schwarzendorn."

  "Oh hooray," George said mournfully.

  A vivid light flared outside, bright enough to penetrate the heavy curtains. Everybody waited, but when the tearing bang of thunder came it was still loud enough to make Agnes jump. She didn't like thunder; it was over-dramatic and showy, like tropical plants.

  Maxim finished his coffee. "I'd better get going."

  Agnes waited for George, but when he stayed quiet, she said: "Harry, Neptune Court and its purlieus will be absolutelycrawling with cops. This is the sortofthingthey really go to town on: an armed man, probably wounded, probably hiding out nearby. They'llsmother that place. "

  "I know."

  She was about to ask How do you know? and then remembered his tours in Northern Ireland. She looked at George, but he was just pouring himself another glass of port.

  "Will you be here?" Maxim asked.

  "For a while – if George doesn't mind. "

  "Be my guest."

  When Maxim had gone, Agnes said: "You didn't eventry to talk him out of it."

  George nuzzled his nose into a glass of port. "You haven't been in the Army. "

  "I'm glad you've noticed. "

  "There's a wounded soldier out there, or he thinks there is. Icouldn't have stopped him with an anti-tank gun. It's the most common form of heroism, risking your life to rescue one of your men. The fact that he's only risking his career – and mine, and the government's – doesn't really make any difference. Not to him, anyway." He gulped his port.

  Agnes looked disapprovingly at George's glass. "You're going to have to watch that stuff. We could be in for a long night."

  "Why does everybody tell me I ought to watch my drinking when they're all so busy watching it for me? Somebody in Whitehall has to be looking at something else, and it might as well be me."

  "Cheer up. Blagg may be dead."

  "With our luck, he's probably shot a couple of coppers as well by now." He reached for the decanter. Beyond the curtains, the rain came down with a sudden clatter on the roof of the Ropewalk below.

  The pain wasn't so bad, it was the breathlessness, using all his energy to suck another few seconds of life from a chest that seemed to be wrapped in rusty iron bands. He knew he had a hole in one lung, leaking air and blood that put pressure on the other lung. They had taught him that much in the Army. They had also taught him that the first thing to do with a wounded man was clear his breathing. But how did you do it yourself, and clear something deep in your chest? And by now he was far too weak to move, even to sit up. Unless somebody found him soon…

  Until then, the only thing to do was endure. Endurance is a soldier's job. A few may turn out to be heroes as well, but a few is all you need; for the rest, what matters is biting down and holding on. The Army had taught him that, too, and the SASacceptance tests had rammed the lesson home by sending him out over the damp Brecon Beacons with a 55~lb Bergen rucksack knowing he had to cover a certain distance in a certain time but not knowing that when he had done it, there wouldn't be the trucks they had promised but a vague assurance of a cup of tea if he kept on marching a few more miles inthatdirection. That was the real test, what they called the 'sickener' factor.

  "Fuckyou lot," Blagg had snarled at the officer in charge, and set out to march to the end of the world. Now, it seemed he was almost there.

  His senses were fading as his whole existence concentrated on taking in the next breath. He had long since stopped noticing the foul smell inside the little concrete box, or the damp grittiness of the floor against his cheek, and he heard only distantly the rolling crash of thunder. But a few minutes later he heard the rattle of heavy rain on the loose corrugated iron sheet hiding the way in, felt the first trickle of water crawling down the floor, and then remembered how long this place took to drain.

  He realised that he was quite likely going to drown. For the first time, the first time in his life, he was horribly and totally afraid.

  The rain was smashing itself into a two-foot-high mist above the roadway as Maxim pulled up outside Billy Dann's house. It was semi-detached and mock Tudor, in a quiet suburban street lined with acacia trees and unbr
oken street lamps. In his slow crawl from the corner as he peered for the right number through the flooding windscreen, it had seemed an odd neighbourhood for the Fight Game: well-weeded drives, well-painted houses, the cars as recommended by Which? and Ratepayers' Association posters in several windows. Maybe he was just wrong about the Fight Game.

  Perhaps there had been a hint of the rain slackening; anyway, it did in the minute he waited in the car. He wrapped a short raincoat around himself and ran up the front path.

  Dannopened the door himself, looking warm and sticky in a pink short-sleeved shirt and bright green slacks. Maxim hadn't been entirely wrong about the Fight Game.

  "Bloodyhell," Dannsaid, "it's you again. Don't they teach you in the Army how to use the telephone?"

  "I just wanted a private word. Are you alone?"

  "Well, right now, yes, but the wife's -"

  "Hop in my car. We'll drive around a bit."

  Dannstared. "Are you totallybarmy? I mean you had noticed there's a hurricane going on out here?"

  Feeling rather like a flasher, Maxim opened his raincoat to show the revolver pointing vaguely at Dann's crotch. "I'll explain in the car. "

  Dannwent wide-eyed and said: "Fucking arseholes," in a reverential sort of voice. Maxim reached around him to pull the front door shut and ushered him down to the car. In the movies they always seemed to make the kidnapped party drive, but Maxim thought about Danndriving his – Maxim's – car into the first acacia while he watched the gun, which seemed to have hypnotised him. It was safer and cheaper to drive one-handed, letting the car steer itself when he changed gear. Why didn't kidnappers choose automatic gearboxes?

  When he had turned two corners and gone about a quarter of a mile, he gave Dannthe pistol. "Sorry about that: I just wanted to get you out of the house. Be careful with it, it's loaded."

  Dannturned the gun in his hands, still staring at it in the passing flares of street lighting.

  Maxim went on: "I'm pretty sure your phone's tapped, your house could be wired, and sornebody'll be watching it. Are youlistening?"

  Dannwoke up and handed the gun back. "Here, you take the bloody thing, I don't know anything about guns… Did you mean all that? Why?"

  "Oh yes." Maxim tucked the gun away. "Did you hear the news tonight?"

  "No, I only listen to the sport. I've got no time for-"

  "There's been a shooting in Rotherhithe. "

  Dannhesitated, then asked: "You mean Ron."

  "It's not him in hospital. But he could be on the run. He could be wounded." He let the car drift to the kerb and stopped with the lights off, watching the rear-view and wing mirrors.

  "Where did he get a gun?"Dannasked.

  "If it is him, he had it all along. Now: do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

  He might've gone to the gym -"

  "I doubt it. That was being watched when I was there. They picked him up there but he shook them off. "

  "Look, who are these buggers? Did you say they'd got my phone tapped?"

  "I said probably. They're Our Side, the Good Guys. Not the police, the ones you're not supposed to talk about. Our Ronnie's mixed up in more things than he knows about. "

  Dann's outrage was mounting. "Isn't there any bleeding law in this country any more?"

  "Yes. There's the one that says you can get up to two years for 'incitement to disaffection'. Hiding a deserter, that means."

  "Then what aboutyou, Major?"

  "Oh, I'm not threatening anybody. I'm so far up the creek myself that when they throw the book at me it'll be the whole library. The point is, we're neither of us in a position to complain. Now-anywhere you can think of? Could he have gone to Dave Tanner?"

  "He might have done, if there was nowhere else,"Dannsaid grudgingly.

  "Where does he live, d'you know?"

  "Place called Neptune Court."

  "Damn!" Maxim slammed the steering wheel with both hands, nearly hard enough to break it, certainly hard enough to make both palms sting. "The shooting was there. He must have been hiding out with Tanner, or gone round to scrounge a meal."

  Why, he thought, why couldn't Blagg have gone out of town, to some place he knew, like Hereford or… Of course not. The only other places somebody who'd joined the Army at sixteen would know were Army places. And as a deserter those were just where he daren't go.

  "Anywhere else, at all?" His voice sounded tired and defeated, even to himself.

  "We could just drive around Rotherhithe, "Dannsuggested without enthusiasm.

  "A couple of hundred police have already had that idea. I came through and it was blue lights from wall to wall… We'd better ask Tanner. "

  "Hold on. If you said the cops are all over, they'll be all over Dave Tanner."

  Maxim switched on the car lights. "Not necessarily. I don't think they know it's Blagg they're looking for, and if they don't know that, they won't know about Tanner. They probably talked to him already, they'd have talked to everybody in that block, just asking if they saw or heard anything. Routine."

  A fresh gust of rain bounced off the bonnet as he pulled away from the kerb.

  The police had stationed their Major Incident Vehicle, a glorified caravan with radio aerials, temporary telephone lines and a flashing blue light on a small mast, in a small crescent at the end of Neptune Court. There were several other police vehicles parked around, and a small group of men working under floodlights and umbrellas at the back of the court itself, but that was all. If you're trying to catch somebody immediately after a crime, you grab every man you can and smother the area. But after two or three hours and nil results, you have to accept that the trail is cold and you can't justify that level of manpower. Out there on the unpoliced streets beyond the floodlights, other people are getting stabbed, mugged, raped, burgled, sometimes even just run over. A death by gunshot is only one item on the programme of a Friday night. And with luck, it could turn out to be a bit of gang warfare which nobody is – unofficially, of course -going to bust a gut trying to solve.

  Maxim drove past and parked a little further on, and Dannsaid suddenly: "What am I doing here?"

  "You can wait in the car. "

  Dannchanged his mind back. "No-o. The kid knows me. I'll come in." It was quite likely that, after Wednesday night. Tanner wouldn't want to be alone with Maxim.

  Tanner was distinctly unhappy to see Maxim again. He lived with his wife, a thin and rather nervous girl with ragged blonde hair, in a second-floor flat that belonged to her widowed mother. The rooms were small, warm and smeltdamp, filled with brightly varnished furniture that looked well made but nevertheless home-made. A motorcycle jacket and a vivid red helmet lay on one end of the small dining table.

  After a couple of minutes' polite talk and the offer of a cup of tea, Mrs Tanner went away to talk to mother.

  "We're looking for Blagg," Maxim said abruptly.

  Tanner swallowed and nodded. He had seemed pale and jittery ever since they had come in.

  "It's for his own good, "Dannput in. "The Major thinks he could be hurt."

  Tanner nodded again. "Yes. The coppers said he – whoever it was-could be."

  "They don't know it's him?" Maxim asked.

  "No, they didn't seem to. "

  "But he was staying here?"

  "Yes. He come round last night. Said could he sleep on the sofa a couple've nights. I mean, he's an old mate. I didn't think anythink like this was going to happen." He shuddered. "I mean, what could happen to me?"

  "Nothing, if we reach him first. Now -"

  "I mean he's left his gear here, hasn't he? That's his bag in the corner, innit? And the cops standing there asking me if I knew anything and all the time it's his gear they're looking at. I mean-"

  "I'll take it away," Maxim soothed him. "Now, any idea where he might go?"

  Tanner thought for a moment and shook his head.

  "Think. We're assuming he's wounded and had to hide nearby. When you're hurt, you regress. I mean, you want to ru
n home to mother. Okay, so he hasn't got a mother. But he might go back to some part of his childhood. "

  "I don't see him going back to the Council,"Dannsaid banteringly. Maxim shot him a furious look.

  "He might not be hurt," Tanner temporised.

  "If he's not, he's probably in Norwich by now and still running. But we have to look at the worst possible case. Is there anywhere round here?'

  There was a long silence. Then Tanner said slowly: "We had this sort've a gang, once. Just when we was kids. I mean, wehad this sort of hideout, meeting place. It was an old air-raid shelter, I think. Only they'd blocked up the way in, like, and you could only get in through… I dunno, maybe it was some sort of ventilation thing. If you kept that covered up, most people didn't even know it was there. "

  "Show us."

  Chapter 13

  George had switched to drinking coffee laced with cognac – "The complete cycle, the disease and the cure in one simple package," and Agnes had muttered something about vitamin C and gone across the big room to play a Mozart piano concerto on the stereo. She felt drained. It had been a long day at the end of a busy week, but that wasn't all of it. At dinner in Littlehampton she had acted perfectly, had been friendly but not familiar, always cheerful, talking enough but not too much – but always acting. There were so few homes where she could relax and, without talking about the hidden things, not be consciously hiding them. It was that, the holding of your thoughts like holding your breath, that broke so many of them in their forties. She had seen it far too often: the self-inflicted divorces, the ones you had to talk to before lunch because the rest of their day was an alcoholic marsh, those shunted to a not-too-responsible job in the Registry or an early pension-Peace hath its victims no less renowned than war. I have perhaps ten more years. Will it all have been worth it?

  Suddenly Mozart seemed too busy and clever, and she started sorting in the cupboard under the turntable until she found a record of Papillons, and lay back surrounded by Schumann's fluttering primary colours.