by John Lawton
“But?”
“But there’s another way to skin a duck …”
“Cat.”
“Eh?”
“The phrase is ‘to skin a cat.’”
“If you say so … the cat-skinning is this. I can’t get you the service file on Denzil Kearney without alarm bells going off in Leconfield House. But you can get hold of the copy at the Yard.”
“Not wholly sure I’m with you, Jordan.”
“Special Branch have files on everyone. They have one on you.”
“Of course.”
“I know—I’ve read it. And they’ll have one on Kearney. Might be out of date. I’d doubt they’ve added to it since 1955, but up to that point it will be as fulsome as your own, which, by the bye, is a mass of innuendo, speculation, and resentment worthy of a cod-Regency novel in which you get to play Sir Jasper.”
“Which,” said Troy, “is why they wouldn’t show me Kearney’s file for love or money.”
“So. The Branch hate you. They’ve always hated you. But now you have Eddie. A man for all seasons. You’ve needed an Eddie for a long time. Jack is far too like you. Another tearaway toff. Quite the wrong class to click with the bowler-hat-and-beetle-crusher brigade. But—if Detective Sergeant Edwin Clark can’t wheedle the file out of Special Branch, I’ll eat my hat.”
Jordan was right, and Troy knew it.
“Of course,” Jordan added. “You may find bugger all. Kearney a Soviet agent? I think not. In fact, Freddie, let me ask—do you actually know what you’re looking for?”
“No. I don’t.”
“But … you think Kearney had an ulterior in sending Blaine out to Vienna.”
“Yes. I told you last night. You weren’t at risk. The target was always Blaine.”
“Kearney knew Blaine would be shot? That means he was dealing with the KGB. Something I won’t believe until you slap irrefutable proof in front of me. Freddie, it would make more sense, if you’re right about Blaine being a wrong’un, to have nicked him before he got on a plane to a neutral country. We don’t let the opposition wipe out their double agents when they’re done with them. We arrest them and we interrogate them and we prosecute them.”
“I never said it made sense,” Troy said. “But it’s what happened.”
It wasn’t what happened, but now was not the moment to say so. It was a puzzle to which Troy had the solution, but so many pieces of the puzzle were still missing. Without the missing pieces, Jordan would never believe him.
§137
“Oh, bloody Norah.”
“Ed, can you do it?”
“In the old days it would have been a doddle.”
“The old days?”
“Rationing. Nothing’s rationed any more. Upshot … people are a damn sight harder to bribe. If this were Berlin in ‘48, I’d bung someone two hundred fags or a couple of pounds of coffee. Even just three or four years back you could corrupt a man with a soddin’ Mars Bar.”
Troy hated Eddie’s occasional obstinacy. It might be his only weakness, to sound like a plumber confronted with a gas tap you have painted over in violation of common sense and the Guild of Plumbers moral code: Thou shalt not paint over the gas tap.
“But you’ll try?”
“I’ll try. Might take a day or two. I can’t just go upstairs and knock on a door. It means hanging around the canteen in the hope of bumping in to the right chatty bastard.”
“OK.”
“And it means you keeping out of the way. You can kill any conversation dead as a doornail when you come into the canteen.”
“So I’m told.”
“What we need is an NCO’s mess …”
“Ed—just do it.”
§138
“This is the last thing I can do for you … if you come up with enough evidence to nick Kearney …”—a shrug as Jordan indicated his disbelief in such a possibility, then, “That will change everything.”
He set a brown envelope on the bench between them. Troy picked it up. Inside were copies of two memos.
One signed, dated the day after Blaine was killed.
I misunderstood you. I’m sorry, but when you said to pull Jordan off Vienna, I didn’t think you meant send no one at all. So I assigned Bill. By far the better man for the job. My cock-up. I take full responsibility. DK.
And one unsigned, dated the day Troy had returned to England.
Denzil, it’s everyone’s cock-up. Can’t be helped. I made our apologies to the PM in person. Probably burning with rage on the inside, but you know Mac—the smoke never shows. He just wants the whole thing forgotten. He’s due in Moscow to meet Khrushchev in less than three months. He’s not going to let what happened in Vienna muddy the waters. Sad but true, a good meeting with Khrushchev counts for a damn sight more than a dead agent or a live traitor.
“Who wrote the second memo?”
“Roger Hollis.”
“Then I think the director gave Kearney his Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.”
“As I said, Freddie. Bring me evidence.”
“What we’re missing is what Hollis actually told Kearney.”
“I refer the Hon. Member to my previous answer.”
“You didn’t find a memo?”
“Most likely it was a phone call. If it was anything like the one I got … late at night, rushed, confusing … plenty of room for error. And don’t go looking for a Hollis/Kearney conspiracy. You won’t find one. Roger’s straight.”
Jordan stood up to leave.
“You know,” Troy said, “one of us really should bring something to feed the ducks or we’ll look like a couple of spies.”
“Very funny, Freddie.”
Jordan snatched back the envelope, turned up his collar, stuck his hands in his pockets, and walked off in the direction of the Mall.
§139
It took Eddie forty-eight hours to appear at Troy’s desk. Smug, triumphant.
He slid a buff-coloured file across to Troy.
Kearney, James Denzil Carnegie
No rank, just his date of birth—5.10.12.
And rubber stamps recording the occasions on which the file had been accessed—twice only. Once in 1940 and again in 1955. A man so above suspicion as never to have earned even curiosity.
“To whom do I owe?”
“Geoff Quigley. Sergeant in the Branch.”
“And what do I owe?”
“He’d like a job.”
“What?”
“He hates the Branch even more than you do. He’d prefer to work in Murder.”
Troy pondered this one. A Trojan horse? An honest, simple, rather difficult request?
“Tell Jack. If he thinks we’re short on coppers we might be able to get him transferred.”
“OK.”
“Do you think he’ll make a detective?”
“You’re asking the wrong person. Whatever made you think I’d make a detective?”
“Just tell Jack.”
When Eddie had gone, Troy opened the file. An unadorned record of a naval career of no particular distinction. Public school, Oxford, the Royal Navy. Kearney had been twenty-six when the war began, a lieutenant commander on a frigate in the Indian Ocean. By 1940, he had risen to commander and was working in Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty in London. He had not seen combat, he had not been to sea again. If he’d remained a regular sailor he might well have been a rear admiral by now—short of cock-ups. But this was Intelligence. Rank did not matter. Power did. As Eddie had reminded him just a few weeks ago, Joe Holderness was a lowly flight sergeant and had the power to call off the dogs—or throw him to the wolves.
Troy learnt nothing he could not have anticipated. A career at once spotless and banal. Not a hint of anything out of the ordinary. If his own file was, as Jordan had put it, “fulsome,” this wasn’t. It was less a “cod-Regency novel,” more like a chit for new regulation-issue boots. No speculation, no innuendo, but then Kearney was one of their own. Troy was not.
H
e flipped the folder over, venting a little of the exasperation he felt. A photograph slid out. He’d missed that.
It wasn’t large, a 620 contact print.
Troy rattled around in a desk drawer for his “Sherlock Holmes Kit.” A six-inch magnifying glass.
Kearney was in uniform, and Troy thought the photograph was probably the best part of twenty years old, taken at the point when he moved from ships at sea to a desk in the Admiralty’s back room.
He was handsome in a very British sort of way. A passing resemblance to the film star Stewart Granger. He looked straight into the lens. Not a sign of self-consciousness or nerves. A face that you might warm to if it smiled, but in the meantime was giving nothing away.
Troy stared, willing Kearney to speak.
§140
Perhaps hours had passed. The light outside was fading. But it was November—or was it December? Nights that fell too soon. Troy realised he had lost track of time in both the immediate sense of its passing and in the bigger sense of the calendar.
He had stared so long at Kearney’s photograph he could see nothing any more.
Voices echoed in the mind’s ear.
“I know everything.”
But she hadn’t told him everything.
“I know everything.”
Venetia disappeared at the end of a long tunnel, a slow diminuendo into silence just when he thought he would hear her voice and those same three words forever. And another voice, another past, rang in his ears:
“Captain on the bridge!”
And he could see a young naval officer springing to attention in Burgess’s bedroom on Bond Street, pissed as a fart, booze-blind to Troy’s presence, only to fall straight back down next to Burgess.
Kearney.
Guy’s last night in England, his leaving-for-Washington-fuck-you-England party that day in 1950.
Kearney.
Guy Burgess’s farewell to Blighty had been to fuck Denzil Kearney.
He slid the photograph to the middle of his desk. He’d binned his collection of name postcards but in the mind’s eye he could see them laid out like a royal flush, ending on the ace—Kearney.
He pressed the intercom.
“Eddie, what day is it?”
“Friday. Are you feeling alright, sir?”
“And the month?”
The line went dead. Eddie appeared in the doorway.
“Are you OK? You don’t speak for hours then you can’t remember what day it is?”
“You told me. It’s Friday.”
“A Friday in December, as it happens.”
Friday again? Fridays came around so soon.
“And the time?”
Eddie pointed at the clock on the wall.
“Half past five.”
Troy pushed up his sleeve to look at his watch, but it was too dark in the room. Eddie flicked on the light and said again, “Are you feeling alright, sir?”
§141
The Fat Man was seated at the kitchen table, filling in a pools coupon.
“Do you reckon Arsenal versus QPR for a draw?” he said.
Troy said nothing.
“Yer bruv’s ‘ere. Was you expecting him?”
“Yes. I’m not trying to avoid him. In fact, he’s the reason I’m here.”
The Fat Man looked up.
“Wonders’ll never cease.”
Licked the end of his pencil and went back to picking draws.
“Have you eaten?”
“O’ course. In fact me and him had steak and kidney pie with spuds and peas at this very table not half an hour ago. Yours is in the oven. Rod’s in your study ‘avin’ a snifter I reckon. It’ll be rabbit tomorrow night. The cat brought one in, but it could do with ‘anging for a day.”
Troy sloughed off his coat and jacket and looked in the oven. When he turned around the Fat Man had set out a plate for him and was holding out a pair of oven gloves.
“Fingers,” he said simply.
Troy ate.
“I think I missed lunch,” he said. “At least, I don’t remember lunch.”
“You alright, cock?” said the Fat Man, much as Eddie had done, but without any “sir.” Eddie forgot his sirs only when he was feeling urgent or irritated, and largely remained purposefully conscious of rank. The Fat Man, on the other hand, knew no deference and “cock” or “ole cock” was the best Troy or anyone would ever get.
“Things on my mind.”
“You can always talk to me, y’know.”
“I know, and thank you. But it’s Rod I need to talk to. Telling anyone else would be burdening them.”
“Well, I ‘opes you get a word in edgeways, ‘cos I learnt more about the perils of being in Parliament than I ever wanted to know. Just as well I wasn’t thinking of standing meself.”
“Jack would be the cold voice of reason. Eddie would mutter endless bloody Norahs … so it’s Rod I need.”
“I getcher. You finish yer grub and nip in there while he’s still sober. But since you’re here … Derby County versus Accrington Stanley?”
§142
Rod had usurped Troy’s study. Fire lit, feet up. The look of a man happy to have escaped constituents and children.
He was a little the worse for wear, but hardly drunk.
“Were we expecting each other?” he said.
“No. I rang Hampstead first. Cid told me you were here.”
“Needed a bit of a break. You haven’t come to ruin it for me, have you?”
“I think I have. Pour yourself another drink.”
“Can’t it, whatever it is, wait?”
“If it could I wouldn’t be here.”
“Work thing, is it?”
“Yep.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Both.”
“Then I will have that drink.”
When Rod had settled again, poked the logs in the fire into life, Troy said, “Tell me about your meeting with Macmillan.”
“I thought I did. I’ve nothing to add and the old man hasn’t summoned me since.”
“Yes, but there’s emphasis. It’s how you say it.”
Rod, having made so many speeches in thirteen years in Parliament, had an excellent memory for the right words in the right order, and told Troy of his meeting with the Prime Minister almost exactly as he had before, ending, “Burgess to Iain? A bit of a non sequitur? Just one of those things. I don’t know why you’re making so much of it.”
Troy said, “Has it occurred to you that it wasn’t a non sequitur? That Uncle Harold had not changed the subject?”
“What, you mean the subject was the queer thing all along?”
“Guy is queer, Iain Stuart-Bell is queer.”
“But Iain isn’t a traitor.”
“And treason was not Macmillan’s subject. Being queer was.”
“Let me get this straight here, bro. You’re saying Macmillan didn’t want Burgess back because he’s queer?”
“Yes. And he wasn’t the only one.”
“So it had nothing to do with him being a traitor?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But ask yourself this. What secrets has Guy been keeping all these years that might not be so secret once he’s back in the RAC or the Reform Club with too much Scotch inside him?”
“Such as who fucked who in the blackout?”
“Or who fucks who in cabinet and who in the cabinet is also in the closet.”
Rod got up, reached for the decanter of Scotch.
“I don’t fucking believe this. Or to be exact, I do.”
He necked one neat, then, with a twinge of conscience, squirted a dash of soda into his second.
“He wasn’t the only one, you said. So tell me. Who else wants dear old Guy to stay in dear old Russia?”
“Denzil Kearney.”
“Do I know him?”
“Section Head, MI5. Jordan’s boss. His boss, but not his equal.”
“And am I to conclude that this Kearney bloke is, as you so succinc
tly put it, ‘in the closet’?”
“Yep.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“And how does this tie in with Bill Blaine and your brush with the Vienna coppers?”
“The KGB didn’t shoot Blaine, our people did. Kearney had Blaine killed to make damn sure Guy’s attempt to come home failed.”
“It wasn’t the Russians? It’s always the bloody Russians!”
“No, it was our lot. And it worked. Guy will be there for ever now.”
“Clutching on to his secrets?”
“Dreaming of England.”
“Drowning in vodka?”
“No, I think he’s learnt to swim in it.”
“Cursing man and God and fate?”
“Pretty much.”
Rod leaned his head back, the Scotch and soda warming in his grip, eyes closed.
“What a mess, what a fucking mess.”
“Quite.”
“It reminds me of where we came in.”
“Eh?”
“You know when we used to go to the flicks as kids. You could buy a ticket at any time, walk in half an hour through the Jean Harlows or the Clark Gables and watch until the film came full circle. Made a bollocks of the plot but we did it often enough. This reminds me of our first encounter with Mr. B. Do you remember what Dad said when he told us Guy was a spy?”
“‘Fraid not.”
“I said, ‘who do we tell?’ and he replied, ‘we tell no one.’”
“Ah … yes, of course he did.”
“He said it because there was no one to tell. And I say it to you now, Freddie, we can tell no one.”
The eyes flicked open, the gaze locked on to his, far from pissed and deadly serious.
Just as seriously Troy looked back and said, “Rod, it isn’t going to be that way.”
“Yes,” said Rod. “I was afraid of that. Why don’t you pour a drink for yourself and tell me what you’re not telling me. You’ve already ruined the weekend and I’ve got all night.”
§143
“I saw it in my mind’s eye as a series of blank cards. Imagine it as a kind of white jigsaw puzzle. The pieces only make sense if you write on them. And then I set it out for real, on the physical plane.