by Lawton, John
‘Carrying?’ Charlie’s voice was shrilly incredulous. ‘You mean you think I have a gun? Why on earth would I have a gun?’
‘Of course—you had Cobb. You don’t need a gun. But I’m not going to take that risk. Stand up and take off your jacket.’
Charlie did as he was told. Got shakily to his feet. Held the jacket out and shook it.
‘Please believe me, Freddie. I didn’t know Cobb was going to do that. Really I didn’t. I told him to stay in the car. The last thing I said to him was, “Stay in the car.”
‘Turn around, drop the jacket, roll up your trouser legs.’
When Charlie stood with his back to him, calves bared like a ludicrous freemason, looking wry-necked over one shoulder, Troy eased himself off the grass and back into the chair, let the gun hang loosely at his side, and waved Charlie down into his chair with his free hand. The move cost him dearly, knocked the breath from his lungs, and he and Charlie faced each other in a crackling, electric silence until Troy found the energy to speak once more.
‘Charlie, this is the deal. And it’s the only one you’re getting. I’ve put everything I’ve just told you on paper, and it’s on its way to lawyers in three different cities, in three different countries, together with copies of Cockerell’s last letter. You’d be well advised to keep me alive, Charlie. If I die they have instructions to send everything to MI5. But you’re safe—your shabby little network is safe—as long as I never hear from you again. If I, or my wife, or any member of my family is ever troubled by either side—it doesn’t matter which—I’ll shop you to both. I want to be left alone. And if I’m not, then we’ll find out the hard way just how convincing the proof is.’
‘The British are gullible, Freddie. Look what mugs Philby made of them. And do you really think you can get anything to the Russians without me knowing?’
‘I’ve already done it.’
‘Eh?’
‘Check the duty log from the watch on the Russian Embassy. You’ll find a man answering my description dropped a letter in their box about 4 a.m. this morning.’
‘You’re being naive. The KGB will—’
‘Пирожки,’ said Troy, softly pouting over the first syllable.
‘What?’
‘Пирожки.’
For the first time Troy felt that he had really got through to Charlie—with a single word in a language he did not speak.
‘Oh God. Oh my God. Khrushchev gave you an embassy code, didn’t he?’
‘There has to be an end to running. I dropped him a line. Told him where she was, that she will say nothing of what little she knows to anyone and how grateful we would both be to be left in peace. You could say I gave you a head start. But you’d better pray the First Secretary grants my wish. If he sends the dogs, we’ve both had it.’
‘You’re mad, Freddie. He might do just that.’
‘And then again he might not. And if he doesn’t, the status quo pertains. You and me with a common cause once more—contra mundum as you used to say when we were kids.’
The silence fell on them again. Troy thought he had said it all. He’d had most of the day to rehearse it, but he’d never been able to work out how it should end. There were no famous last words on the tip of his tongue.
‘I’ll miss you, Charlie.’
Charlie’s eyes flashed. The finality of what Troy had said seemed to sting him.
‘That’s it, eh? Just like that?’
‘We’ve nothing more to say to one another.’
‘You’ve said an awful lot, Freddie, but you haven’t asked me why.’
‘I’m not interested in why. I never much cared for ideologies.’
‘It’s got bugger all to do with ideologies. Isn’t it obvious why?’
Troy said nothing.
‘Hasn’t it been obvious since we were kids at school? Didn’t you swear oaths to kill every last one of the bastards every time they beat us black and blue? Didn’t you ask a dozen times a day what all that hidebound ritual had to do with you and me? Didn’t it send you screaming into the world hating God and King and Country? And every last damn thing they stood for? Don’t you still look around and ask what all this has to do with you or me? Don’t you still ask yourself how you can ever belong to all this?’
Charlie’s arm swept out inclusively—the house, the garden, the pig pens, the willows and the river, so English in their deepgreenness and their mild eccentricity, so Russian in the human choices they represented and the extremes they struggled silently and secretly to reconcile and if not reconcile contain. The irony of this was lost on Charlie—they were simply symbols close to hand—but hardly on Troy, and Troy knew that he did belong to this, as much as it to him, and knew that he could not explain this to Charlie.
‘We don’t belong, you and I, Freddie. We never did. It was you and me contra mundum for so long.’
His voice dropped to a whisper, the darkness of the confessional.
‘And if you don’t belong, you can’t betray.’
It seemed to Troy like the distillation of all that Deborah Keeffe had said to him—her intelligent, heartfelt argument boiled down to a ruthless conclusion, to a licence to kill.
‘We all said things like that. It didn’t mean a thing,’ he said, knowing full well that it did.
‘Oh no—I meant it. I meant I was out to get them. I was fit to kill.’
‘And who did we kill in the end, Charlie? A weaselly, clapped-out ex-frogman, a pissed-out chartered accountant, a gullible, innocent girl—’
‘And Cobb, Freddie. We killed Cobb.’
‘That doesn’t change anything, Charlie. Cobb’s not my responsibility.’
Charlie looked at Cobb’s body. The chest drenched in grume. The forehead pierced by a clean, bloodless black hole. He looked back at Troy. Whatever it was he was about to say, Troy had heard enough.
‘You can go now, Charlie. We’ve said all we’re ever going to say.’
Charlie stared at Troy, but did not move.
‘I mean it, Charlie. Go now.’
Charlie got to his feet. His lips parted. No words came out. He turned on his heel and began to stride briskly away.
‘Charlie,’ Troy called after him. ‘You’re forgetting Cobb.’
Charlie stopped.
‘What? You can’t seriously expect me to drag his carcass after me?’
‘Yes I can. Think of yourself as Hamlet with Polonius. Lug the guts behind the arras.’
Charlie came back a few paces, drew level with Cobb’s body.
‘What the hell do you expect me to do with him?’
‘I don’t know, Charlie. I don’t care. But you’ll think of something. You always do.’
Charlie seized Cobb by the collar of his jacket and tugged. The body moved a couple of feet, the heels of his shoes scoring parallel furrows in the turf. The look on Charlie’s face was expectant, as though Troy must inevitably see the impossibility of his disposing of Cobb’s corpse, but Troy just stared back at him and said nothing. He watched Charlie all the way to the gate. It took fifteen minutes of tugging, resting and sweating to get there—Troy watching all the time. And when Charlie’s car had roared off he sat and watched a green and yellow dragonfly dance in eccentric circles across the lawn, watched the first tinge of dusk reddle the sky, heard the tuneless rattle of a wren singing—sat until he felt the chill of evening raise his skin, sat until the last swallow had caught the last fly on the wing, and the first bats had glided into the weft of evening.
He was still clutching the gun, his fingers wrapped around the butt as if it had grown out of his arm. He reached for his stick. The leg hurt more than ever. He leant on the stick and limped into the house.
In the semi-darkness he could make out Tosca sitting halfway up the stairs, pale of face, knees under her chin, arms clasped to her shins, the white-gloved hand wrapped around the other, staring at him.
He flipped the magazine from the Mauser and emptied the clip.
‘You
can live with that?’ she said softly as the bullets fell into his hand like peas shelled from the pod.
‘We’re not going to talk about it.’
‘Jeezus, Troy. That was murder.’
‘We’re not going to talk about it . . . because if we do then we’ll have to ask how many lives you’ve been responsible for in your time.’
‘Troy, I told you a thousand times. I was just a spy. I dealt in information. I never killed anybody!’
‘Do you really believe that?’
She stamped her feet all the way upstairs. He heard the door of her bedroom close.
Troy hobbled into the kitchen. The light was on. The kettle sang on the gas ring. The Fat Man sat at the kitchen table eating a roast beef sandwich.
‘How long have you been here?’ said Troy.
‘Long enough,’ said the Fat Man. ‘Like I said, yer Old Spot’s due to farrow tomorrow, so I thought I’d best look in on ’er today.’
Troy sat down opposite him. Put the gun on the table.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Of course. The pig. I’d forgotten about the pig.’
‘Anything I can do to help, old cock?’
‘Can you get rid of this?’ Troy said with his hand still on the Mauser.
‘I should think so.’
‘Permanently?’
‘Consider it done, old cock.’
Troy slid the gun across the table, like a pint of beer sent skidding along a bar, and the Fat Man slipped it into his belt and pulled his ragged pullover down over it.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘do you fancy a cup o’ rosy lea?’
§105
For three days they ate their meals in silence—a precise illustration of cartoons by Osbert Lancaster, they sat at opposite ends of the dining table in an atmosphere that would straighten a corkscrew. Between meals they found occupation at far corners of house or garden and at bedtime retired, Maxim and Mrs de Winter, to their separate rooms.
On the evening of the fourth day Troy motored up to London and spent a night at Goodwin’s Court. The next morning he went into the Yard, still in pain, still leaning heavily on a walking stick. Onions sat by the gas fire in his office waiting, puffing gently on a Woodbine. It was a familiar scene. Troy had arrived at his office dozens of times over the years to find Onions there, in just that pose—hunched over gas fire and ashtray regardless of the time of year, regardless of whether the fire was lit or not.
He drew deeply on the stub of his cigarette and looked up as Troy sat down opposite him.
‘I been hearing rumours,’ Onions said.
‘Of course,’ said Troy simply.
‘Rumours the like of which I’ve never heard about a copper at the Yard and never did expect to hear.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s got to be taken care of. I’ve got to take care of it. You do see that, don’t you, Freddie?’
Troy slipped a long white envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Onions. Onions turned it over in his hand. It was unsealed and was addressed to ‘Ass’t Commissioner Onions’ in Troy’s overelaborate, near-cyrillic hand. Onions stuffed it in his jacket pocket unread.
‘How long do you think you’ve got? How long do you think you’ve got before they come for her? One side or the other.’
‘It’s taken care of. I’ve taken care of it.’
Пирожки.
Onions lit a fresh cigarette from the dying glow of the first.
‘I never thought it would end like this,’ he said.
Troy drove home, pushing the Bentley for all it was worth along the Great North Road. Rounding the bend that took him clear of the beech trees at the top of the drive he could see the house in the first light of autumn. The sun was low on the skyline, cutting sharply through the trees, dappling the house with shadows of hawthorn’s stripped boles. He wound down the window—the air had that unmistakable autumnal smell, the sharp, clean smell of ploughed earth displacing the dusty tang of harvest. The Indian Summer was over. In a single night the seasons had changed, and October had been claimed. The porch door was ajar and filling up with golden leaves rustling gently in the breeze. The house was empty.
He called out as though hearing his own voice in a dream, as though returning to a house he had seen only in a dream, lived in only in some other life—but no one answered.
Up in Tosca’s room a note was propped against the mirror—a stiff foolscap sheet of crested Mimram House paper.
§106
Troy was left with the problem of how to close four cases. The death of Arnold Cockerell could be left exactly as it had been in April. The death of George Jessel exactly as it had been in September. The deaths of Madeleine Kerr and Johnny Fermanagh needed some conclusion—for the record if for nothing else the Yard had to state a reason for looking no further. Then a circular memorandum appeared on his desk informing him of the disappearance of Cobb on MoD business. Wintrincham drew no conclusions in public. If he knew what Onions knew, he kept it to himself. It was obvious what Charlie had told the Branch. God alone knew what they had told Cobb’s family—if he had one. It had not occurred to Troy to ask before. Troy then issued a description of a man, that fitted Norman Cobb precisely, as wanted in connection with the murders of Kerr and Fermanagh, and placed it in front of Jack. Jack accepted it without a murmur and quietly let the cases drop.
§107
Autumn brought the world to the brink of madness. A surge of bellicosity that looked like the willed fulfilment of some collective death wish. Russian tanks rolled around Poland as Poland offered the promise of a political spring in autumn—Khrushchev flew into Warsaw and flew home again with the promise nipped in the bud. Kolankiewicz phoned Troy and said flatly, without the faintest trace of humour or histrionics, ‘I told you so. You have supped with the devil.’
November brought the meeting of the stones. The world went wild again. Over the brink of madness and into the abyss. Britain and France invaded Egypt. Russia invaded Hungary. Bulganin casually threatened to blast London and Paris.
Stones met.
Troy read the papers every day, saw the newsreels in the Eros Cinema at Piccadilly Circus—British paratroopers floating down over Suez like great white jellyfish; an armada of French and British ships steaming south—his natural cynicism taking no pleasure in being proved right. The victorious allies of the last war spanned the world, bestrode it like squabbling colossi.
Stones met.
He stood awkwardly in Onions’ sitting room, clutching a brown ale, with a bewildered, angry Onions, a silent, resentful Valerie-in-her-moated-grange, while Jackie sat at the table drawing endless concentric circles in fifty different colours on a large sheet of paper, and watched the nine-inch television set the new generations had imposed on Onions—watched Gaitskell address the nation, a rousing, faultlessly moral speech, damning Her Majesty’s Government for their ‘criminal folly’, and across his face was written the pain of a man who knew himself deceived. The Prime Minister must resign, he said, it was the only way to ‘save the honour of our country’, and in that ringing phrase he felt the hand of Rod. It took him back to Janet Cockerell, and the matter of her husband’s honour. She had had no time for honour, so male a notion. It was guilt that mattered.
Stones met.
He stood with the raggle-taggle British dissidents in Trafalgar Square. Duffle-coated optimists flying in the face of their country at its most banal, as it burst with British patriotism, ‘their finest hour’ rendered down to ‘an ignoble loneliness’. Heard Nye Bevan, the finest political orator in the land, argue for ‘law not war’. Rod should have been there. On the platform, side by side. It was a Rod moment, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Stones met.
Ike tore up the ‘special relationship’. Lit a bonfire in the White House. New wars consumed by old flames. The British forces ground to a halt in the sands of Egypt, no ‘right wheel at Ismailia’, no ‘next stop Cairo’, no hope, no glory—starved of economic fuel and political will. Vanit
y, folly and fire. New war. Old flames.
And Troy went in search of Angus. He found him in the third pub he tried—the ‘Two Dogs at It’. The landlord had dug out a framed photograph of Churchill and a pair of Union Jacks on little wooden sticks, stuck Winston over the bar and crossed the flags above him. Troy entered at an opportune moment—Angus was yelling, ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? Battle of Britain part two? What do you silly sods think the last ten years have been? The commercial break? And where did you get ’em? The national dressing-up box?’
It came rapidly, instantly to blows. Troy dragged Angus out still hurling insults at simple-minded men who saw themselves as simple patriots and were baffled to simple violence by his abuse of them. He felled three of them before Troy could even bundle him to the door. ‘Dulce et decorum est,’ he was yelling. ‘Pro bunch of arselickers mori!’
Troy watched the anger in them subside as quickly as it had flared up, the sad shake of heads—‘and him a war hero too’. The two of them fell out onto the pavement, Angus’s tin leg skidded from under him in the gutter, his briefcase flew through the door and landed at his feet—his bowler hat followed, Troy reached up and caught it neatly at full stretch, heading for the boundary and a probable six.
‘Right y’buggers.’ Angus got to his feet, but he wasn’t facing the ‘Two Dogs at It’, he was looking to the muted orange glow leaking out into the November night from the ‘Lucifer’s Arms’ on the other side of the street.
‘Right y’buggers,’ he said again, and pursed his lips—a burbling raspberry sound—and it dawned on Troy that this was the noise small boys made when playing aeroplanes. Angus’s arms levelled at the horizontal.
‘Chocks away,’ he said. ‘Takkatakkatakkatakkatakkatakkatakka.’ And shot through the doors of the ‘Lucifer’s Arms’ and into another dogfight.
Troy waited. Stared at the dented crown of the bowler. Looked at his watch. Five minutes passed with no sign of anything more than the usual pub hubbub. He pushed open a door. A man at the bar was farting out the rhythm of the national anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’ played without melody upon the human sphincter, and no one paid a blind bit of notice. Angus was seated at one of the small, round pedestal tables, two enormous scotches before him, his face buried in his hands. All Troy could see of him was the balding pate and the ginger halo spiralling out into the ether. He sat down next to him. Angus took his face from his hands and looked up at Troy—a flurry of burst veins; a relief map of Arizona, criss-crossed with dry river beds; a rough sketch of the moon pitted with open pores the size of craters; Passchendaele the day after.