by Ian Rankin
The second message was from a less than sober Billy, asking if they might meet for lunch tomorrow. Jack, entering from the kitchen with two mugs of coffee, a packet of biscuits between his teeth, was motioned to listen.
“Billy here, Miles. Hate these bloody machines. Inhuman. Can’t talk to them.”
Technology worried Miles, too. It used to be the case that when someone died, for example, all that was left were memories and perhaps a few faded photographs. But now there were tape recordings and video recordings, and so memory became less important to the process. That was a dangerous phenomenon, for machines could be manipulated, could go wrong, could forget.
Just as the Arab’s smile was slipping away from him forever.
His private line, the messages always came by way of his private line. Ever more regularly, and despite two changes of number, they came. A trace had been put on the calls, but they were always too succinct.
“I’m going to have you, Sizewell, really I am.”
Partridge had sent some fool around to interview him. Did he know who could be responsible for the calls? No, of course he didn’t. Did he know why someone should want to “get him”? Oh yes, he knew that all right, but he wasn’t about to say anything to anyone about it. Except perhaps to Partridge himself.
The telephone rang again, and was answered by the man whose job it now was to do so. Harry Sizewell was no coward. He had brought in Partridge and his men not out of weakness, but as part of his strategy. He was trying to show his tormentor that he would not give in to threats, that he would be strong. But what if the man wouldn’t play any longer? What if he did have something from Sizewell’s past? Everyone had skeletons in their closet, didn’t they? Everyone had something which would be best left to rot away in secrecy and in darkness.
I’m going to have you, Sizewell, really I am.
It was the bully’s pointed promise to everyone who would not stand up for themselves. Well, he, Harry Sizewell, would not shrink from such a challenge. Bullies were there to be beaten; it was their only purpose in life. And when Sizewell suspected that Partridge and his gang were not taking the whole thing seriously enough, he made a complaint that sent Partridge himself scurrying out of the woodwork.
“What else can we do?”
“You tell me, Partridge. I thought that was your job.” Sizewell was standing, Partridge seated. The latter’s appearance of total calm made Sizewell angrier still.
“We could change your number again.”
“You’ve tried already. He still bloody well gets through.”
“Yes, that is interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it cuts down the number of possible culprits. Not everyone has immediate access to VIP ex-directory numbers. We’re making inquiries in that direction.”
“Good of you, I’m sure.”
“If we could do more we would. Don’t you believe that?”
“I’m not sure if I do.”
Partridge smoothed his hands over his knees. “How long have we known each other, Harry?”
“Look, it’s quite simple. All I’m asking—”
“How long?”
Sizewell glanced toward him, then away. He crossed to the window and stared out through the heavy net curtain. The curtaining came with the job. It was bomb-resistant, there to catch shards of glass and trap them. But he was not bomb-resistant. He turned.
“Look, Partridge, I happen to be friendly with the PM, and—”
Partridge had already risen to his feet and was approaching the telephone. He bent down toward the wall socket and pulled out the connector.
“Satisfied?” he asked with a smile.
Sizewell strode over toward him. “No, I’m bloody not, and if that’s your attitude—”
Harry Sizewell’s cheeks were a strong color of red already, partly natural, partly from anger and frustration. They grew even redder when Partridge, seeming hardly to move at all, struck him with first the palm and then the back of his hand. Sizewell’s mouth opened, and his eyes grew foggy like a botched piece of double glazing.
“You’re acting like a child,” Partridge said. “For God’s sake, that’s no way for someone in your position to behave. We all have to deal with these sorts of thing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more pressing matters.”
“I’ll report this, Partridge, don’t think that I won’t!”
But the door was already closing. Sizewell touched his face with his fingers, feeling the soft red of the slap and behind it the fierce burning of humiliation.
“Don’t think I won’t,” he muttered, reconnecting the telephone.
EIGHT
KING’S CROSS ON A MONDAY morning had the scowling face of a spoiled child. Partridge liked railway stations for their human- interest value. Low-life scoundrels rubbed shoulders with haughty businessmen, while Pavlovian clusters of travelers sipped gray tea and watched the flickering departures board.
A ragged creature shuffled his feet to a tune played on the harmonica, while his free hand jostled for money from the restless commuters. He was not having much luck, and moved along quickly with a sideways, crablike motion, while the conspiracy to ignore his existence held fast.
While Partridge watched this circus, the old boy watched the trains themselves. It was a hobby he had held dear for over forty years. He was standing at the very farthest tip of the platform, beside two other spotters, one a teenager, unhandsome and dressed in the perennial duffel coat, the other a man in his thirties, who looked like an off-shift station employee. The director seemed to know this man, for they had swapped notes at one point, while Partridge, halfway down the platform and looking for all the world like a civil servant, watched. Partridge had taken up train spotting only after having discovered that it was the one real passion in his superior’s life. He checked his sleek watch now. It was ten-seventeen.
“Miles,” Partridge said affably, “good of you to come. The old boy would like a word.”
The dung beetle comes of a very good family, Scarabeidae, among which sits on high the sacred scarab. The ancient Egyptians worshipped it like some deity. Silent, black, the scarab seemed to hold within itself the power and the meaning of the universe.
And for this reason, Miles liked to think of his most superior officer as the sacred scarab, most honored of all the beetles.
“Good morning, sir.”
Miles’s greeting went unanswered as the director busied himself jotting down an engine number.
“I only collect the engine numbers, you know,” he said at last, as the train pulled to a stop. “Some enthusiasts collect carriage numbers, too. But there’s such a thing as being over-enthusiastic, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Some spotters, well, they always need to know more. Their curiosity can never be satisfied. Then there are others like me, like Mr. Partridge here, who are interested in only the one part of the hobby, and we stick to that. Do you see?”
“Yes, sir,” said Miles, not seeing at all.
“Miles, I’m not famous for circumlocution. You’ve been doing some hunting within the department. I want to know why.”
“Well . . .” began Miles.
A woman was having trouble opening the door of her carriage, and Partridge rushed forward to help her. She seemed impressed, and glanced back at him as she walked up the platform, a heavy bag hanging from one arm. Partridge came to rejoin them, seeming pleased with himself. More than ever he reminded Miles of Platyrhopalopsis melyi. Mel, Latin for honey. Partridge’s smile oozed from his face.
“Well, sir,” Miles began again, “I was just a little worried by the Latchkey business, that’s all.”
“Worried?” said Partridge.
“Yes. You see, there was something about that operation which struck a wrong chord.”
“Your own bungling, perhaps?”
“All right, I fell for a very old trick, but it’s more than that. I’m not just trying to cover up my mistake
s.”
“Then just what exactly are you trying to do?” asked Partridge.
“I merely wanted to be sure that my own mistake had been the only one made.”
“And that involved checking on Mr. Partridge and myself?” The old boy was fingering his dog-eared notebook. It looked for all the world like a coded series, all those columns of numbers.
“It was routine, sir. I was looking at everyone.”
“We know that,” snapped the director. “You’d be surprised what we know. But you have to admit that your investigation has been anything but ‘routine.’ You must realize that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now let’s get some tea and talk about cynegetics.”
“You were a classics man, weren’t you, Flint?”
Miles watched the Earl Grey being poured, while Partridge stared from the window of the hotel’s morning room. A few turnings had lifted them out of the immediate squalor of King’s Cross and dropped them in this backwater of tranquility. Miles felt that this would be where the interrogation really started.
“I was, yes.”
“Then you’ve probably heard the word ‘cynegetic’?”
“I know that kynegetes means hunter.”
“Quite so. There is, and this is for your ears only, a very small unit within the department. Someone somewhere decided to call it the Cynegetic Section. Someone with a classics degree, perhaps.” The director smiled to himself. “Anyway, Cynegetics is involved with the rooting out of, well, let’s just say of anyone who might be acting in a suspicious manner. Especially, it is interested in those who appear to be hunting within the department.”
“I see.”
“As you were doing,” added Partridge, turning from the window to add just a touch of milk to his tea, stirring it slowly. “Very ably, I might add.”
“And,” said the director, “as others seem to be doing. You met with Richard Mowbray recently?”
“I’ve been assigned to the same case.”
“Yes, but before that. He followed you to a record shop. Cynegetics were following him.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with Mowbray, sir.”
“We’re aware of that,” answered Partridge. God, thought Miles, what a double-act they make. Such timing.
“But it does seem rather a large coincidence,” the old boy said on cue. “Doesn’t it?”
Miles decided not to answer. Through the morning-room doors he could see a whispered commotion in the lobby. A suitcase had been left unattended, and the staff didn’t want to touch it.
“Miles,” began the director solicitously, “I’m retiring soon. Perhaps as soon as the end of this year. And I don’t want to find, as some of my predecessors have found, any blemish staining the last days of my public career, or of my ensuing retirement, come to that. You understand? A fairly substantial honor is not too far away.”
Miles understood.
“So,” the old boy continued, not looking so old now, his eyes as hard as diamonds, “I would be . . .perturbed if anything were to come to light, especially without my knowing about it. You’ve read the newspapers lately, you know that Fleet Street has more than a few daggers drawn against us. We need to be . . .what’s the phrase again? Ah, yes, we need to be a ‘clean machine.’ An American friend of mine is very keen on that phrase.”
“At the same time,” Partridge interrupted, his voice low with sincerity, “if I should happen to be promoted to director—”
“As seems likely,” explained the director.
“—then I should not want to find myself faced with a first duty of investigating my own service. Nor should I like to think that I were being spied upon by my own officers. There has been too much of that in the past by the—what do the press term them?—the Young Turks. Too much of it, Miles, and too much of it of late. The service is secure, Miles. Believe that. The service is secure.”
What could he say? Could he tell them that, no, the service was not secure, all because of a smile that might not have been directed at him? Their faces bespoke the sublime, like monks who know no sin. In their most upper echelon of the firm, ignorance was indeed bliss. Cynegetics had been set up to keep the place nice and tidy, as though for an inspection. Push all the dust under the carpets. Miles realized that, quite simply, these men did not want to know, and if they did not want to know, then to all intents and purposes there was nothing to know. No knowledge could exist unless they accepted it.
“I see,” he said, lifting his cup. “Is that all?”
“Well,” said Partridge, “I for one would like to know just what your suspicions were.”
“Yes, good point,” said the director.
Miles sipped his tea. He paused for a moment, then swallowed.
“Whatever it was,” he said, “it’s history now.”
They seemed pleased with this, like schoolboys whose gofer was not going to report a roasting at their hands.
“I am enjoying this tea,” said the director brightly. “It’s rare to find a good cup of tea these days, even in London.”
“I quite agree,” said Partridge, smiling at Miles.
The fracas in the lobby seemed to have ended. Someone had come forward and claimed the case as his. Miles caught a glimpse of a young woman as she walked past the reception desk. He wondered where he had seen her before. Then he remembered. Only two weeks ago, in the cocktail bar, with Latchkey grinning toward him. Here she was, delivered into his hands in one of the firm’s “safe” hotels. Coincidence? Miles thought not. He was beginning to believe in kismet.
When the occasional customer, all social conscience and guilt reflex, asked Felicity why she did what she did, when she had—in their tired old phrasing—“so much going for her,” she usually just shrugged, and they would let it rest. Of late, however, she had given the question some thought. The money was good, of course, and often she would be involved in little more than escort work. Her clients were businessmen, desperate for success, and a pretty, intelligent companion for the evening was, to them, a sign of that success. She tried not to think about the other nights, the tough ones, when she took on the lechers and the heavyweight drinkers. She cried after those engagements, and bathed, soaking them out of her system. It was hard work, too hard sometimes.
The hotel management never troubled her. If they became suspicious, well, her appearance and her accent were usually enough to see them off, and there were other ways, too, of course. She did it for the money. She was saving up to open her own boutique, or—last month’s notion—a bookshop. She had changed her mind so often. But she had a good bank manager, who advised her on possible investments and never asked about taxes and such. She was just waiting for the day when he, too, would become a customer. There was a sordid glimmer to his smile. But one day she would put all this behind her and become a celebrity. Her shop, whatever it was, would be the place to be seen. Her photograph would appear in the magazines, and she might even be seen on TV . . .Seen by all her old clients, who would recognize her. And then one of them would sell the story of her past life to a newspaper, out of spite. Sheer spite . . .
“Hello, miss.”
And she had saved her money so well, and had fought off the competition. (God, some of those girls were tough.) She had not given in to the many pimps who had tried to threaten her. She was not stupid. She would not have succeeded if she were. Her mother had taught her all she had needed to know about survival. All those dark, cold nights of fireside horror stories about how life could suck you as dry as a beached bone. All those lessons . . .
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?” She looked up from her reverie into the smiling eyes of a small, middle-aged man.
“We’ve met before,” he said. “At least I think we have. Yes, I’m sure of it. Though I’m a bit early for our appointment.”
“Appointment?”
“Yes, we met two weeks ago. In the Doric. Just off the Strand. You asked me if I had a light, and then we met again in the co
cktail bar. I said we could arrange to meet there again in a year’s time.”
Felicity laughed.
“I remember now,” she said. “You ran away from me. I have to tell you that men don’t often do that. I was a bit startled.”
“Well, that evening, I was a bit unsettled myself.”
“Won’t you join me?”
She was seated at a small table in the reception area. Miles had watched her for a minute or two, Partridge and the old boy having left for the office. As he sat down, Felicity thought to herself, he’s actually quite tall. Why did I think he was short?
“You remember that night?” he asked.
“Oh yes. You seemed to be just about the only unattached person in the place, apart from me. Birds of a feather, I thought, but I was wrong, it seems.”
“That was why you approached me twice?”
“Yes.” Her voice was steady, but Miles detected something. It had been a while ago now, and she had allowed herself the luxury of forgetting all the details. But something about that evening had just come back to her, and she was trying to think about it at the same time as she spoke to him. He decided to attack.
“Who put you up to it?”
“I beg your pardon?” The blood began to color her already flushed cheeks. She was pretty, there was no doubting that. Even Partridge had given her more than cursory attention before leaving.
“I asked who put you up to it. The whole thing was a setup, wasn’t it? I can see it in your face, Miss . . .?”
“Felicity,” she whispered.
“Look, Felicity, it was a long time ago, wasn’t it? But you do remember? It’s hardly going to hurt you now to tell me who it was, is it? Who put you up to it, Felicity?”
“I . . .” She was just a little frightened now, and Miles did not want to frighten her.
“Do you know what it was all about?” he said. “I’ll tell you, it was a joke arranged by some friends of mine. I was waiting there for them, you see, and I think they put you up to it, so that they could have a laugh when they finally did come along and find us together. Is that it, Felicity?”