Dead Letter Drop

by Peter James

  I went over and over everything late into the night, pacing the hotel room until the facts blurred into an unfathomable mess inside my mind and I slept a fitful sleep. Rain lashed through the night and a howling wind shook the windows, and I had repeatedly to get out of bed and ram wedges of paper down the sides of the frames in an attempt to stop the rattling. I awoke finally at 7.00 feeling in need of a good night’s sleep.

  I checked the room thoroughly to ensure there was nothing through which I could be traced. At least there were no fingerprints to worry about: I had worn either my fabric gloves or my surgical gloves all the time I had been in the room. I left the various wash things, and everything except what I needed today, in the room, although it was unlikely that I would be coming back.

  It was bitterly cold outside; the rain had gone but the wind remained, gusting in great sweeps down the corridors formed by the skyscraper buildings. I had breakfast in a cafe then walked to the office. I unlocked the front door and left it unlocked. I switched on the power for the elevator then again made a thorough search of the building. Each time I walked through the rooms of that building they looked worse.

  I sat down in my own suite; it was eleven o’clock. I took from my pocket the calculator I had been given by Trout and Trumbull: it was an innocuous-looking thing and had emblazoned in gold lettering on the outside the model-name: Vatiplier. I also took from my pocket a large pink envelope, a black marker pen and a strip of blue ribbon. On the outside of the envelope I wrote with the pen the word Goodbye.

  I was craving for a cigarette and realised I had forgotten to buy a new packet. I went over to the window and looked out. Bits of paper and other garbage swirled down the street. There was nothing else in sight, not a person nor a car; it was desolate.

  Twelve o’clock finally came. I lifted the receiver and dialled the number of the call box: I hoped to hell it hadn’t been vandalised during the night. The number was answered before it even had a chance to ring.

  ‘Good morning, Digger,’ said a heavily disguised voice. There was no mistaking whose voice it was: Scatliffe’s. I gave him the directions, repeated them once, then hung up.

  Then I clapped my hands together; I’d done it, I knew I’d bloody done it! He’d taken the bait, hook, line and sinker, and now I was reeling him in. I looked at my watch. I reckoned it should take him about twelve minutes by taxi; allow him a couple of minutes on top to hail one. Fourteen minutes.

  The taxi arrived in thirteen minutes and pulled up outside. I didn’t stretch over too much as I didn’t want to risk being seen, but I could see only one person emerge, a figure in a trilby hat and blue Crombie coat. I pulled on my coat, turned up the collar, put my dark glasses on, pulled my hat down over my forehead; my own mother wouldn’t have recognised me. A sharp buzz from the alarm system I had rigged up told me he’d pushed the button for the elevator.

  At the top of the calculator was a plastic lid, which I slid aside, revealing a small pin-shaped object. I pulled the pin out and pocketed it. In exactly ninety seconds the calculator would explode with, Trout and Trumbull had assured me, considerably more force than a conventional hand grenade.

  I stepped inside the elevator, pushed the down button, and we started our descent. I sealed the calculator inside the pink envelope, tied the ribbon in a neat bow around it, and then taped it to the inside panel of the sliding door. When the door was open it would be invisible and it would only appear as the door slid shut again. By then it would be too late because the next time the door shut it would stay shut and the elevator would automatically rise to between the second and third floor; there it would stop, and there it would stay.

  Thirty of the ninety seconds had ticked away by the time we reached the bottom. As the door slid open I bowed my head slightly to sink further into the upturned collar, watching out of the corner of my eye the envelope neatly disappear from view.

  From the way I had arranged the lighting panel on the ground floor it would have appeared to Scatliffe that I was coming from the third floor, not the eighth floor where I had actually come from, so he would not have any reason to connect me with the purpose of his visit. I swept out of the elevator as the figure in the trilby hat and the blue Crombie coat entered. He gave me only a cursory glance, his mind evidently preoccupied with other matters, but there was nonetheless the vaguest hint of recognition in his glance, a moment of uncertainty, as if he knew that he had once somewhere met me before but he couldn’t think where.

  As the door shut, gratingly, unremittingly, upon him I knew that if he was thinking he had seen me once before he was right. He’d bowled me out. The man in the trilby hat and blue Crombie coat who had just entered that elevator wasn’t Scatliffe at all. He was Anthony Lines, the Home Secretary.

  I walked swiftly down the road. Ninety seconds came up on my watch when I was about a hundred yards down. I was in a state of shock. I heard a faint muffled noise through the wind, very faint. A moment later there was the sound of crashing glass; it was followed by more crashing glass: it was a huge noise. I turned and looked back at the office building. In a random succession, one after another, windows dropped out and crashed down to the ground. I stared in amazement, watching the frames twist, then buckle, flinging great chunks of glass out, away and down.

  Suddenly one entire side of the building sagged; bricks, plaster, wood, glass rained down, then the entire building leaned over and collapsed like a pack of cards into a vast irregular pyramid of rubble that spewed right out into the street.

  This time, I thought, Trout and Trumbull had really gone over the top.

  25

  Life has a nasty habit of creeping up behind you and clipping you on the ear when you least expect it. As you lift your hand up to your ear the great iron fist of life strikes out full into the area some six inches below your belt. For a long time after, you feel weak as hell and sick as a dog. That’s how I felt standing over the wash-basin back in the Madison Park East Hotel.

  The brown dye was revolting and streamed down my face as I attempted to restore my hair back to its usual colour. The moustache and beard came painfully away, ripping out three days growth of hair in the process, and I flushed them down the lavatory. I didn’t think it would take even the New York police too long to figure out there might be a connection between a collapsed building on 3rd Street, the dead body inside it, and a blonde-haired man with a beard and moustache.

  The hotel hadn’t changed in the last few days since I had last stayed. Quasimodo’s grandson downstairs still seemed to be enjoying his movie show on the blank wall; the cockroaches still seemed to be enjoying themselves in the bathroom. The one person who was definitely not enjoying himself was me.

  I was busy figuring out hard how having murdered the Home Secretary was going to help my future career. I didn’t think it was going to help it too much. Nor, probably, did he. What had happened was still only just beginning to sink home. The further it sank, the less I liked it. And this was the least of my worries. I tried to think clearly and it was difficult. It all pointed to Anthony Lines and yet it couldn’t have been him. His role in this was crystal clear to me: he had discovered exactly what I had; he’d intercepted the message to the Pink Envelope and had come out himself in order to get to the bottom of the matter.

  But it had been Scatliffe’s voice on the telephone. I was absolutely certain of that. Lines’s voice was nothing like Scatliffe’s. Either Scatliffe had been with him or he had done a remarkable job of mimicking Scatliffe’s voice. It didn’t make sense that he would have mimicked Scatliffe’s voice. But it was possible that there was a reason; anything was possible. Too many things were possible and only one thing was absolutely certain: that I was up shit creek, in a barbed wire canoe with no paddle. By what I had done to Lines I had probably pulled the bung out as well.

  I had been certain that Scatliffe was the Pink Envelope. When his voice had come on the telephone I knew that the agony and risks I had put myself through during the past days had paid off.
And now I was holed up in this wretched room with my career destroyed, a murder hunt about to begin for me, and not the first idea what to do next. If I had been right about Scatliffe then I seemed to have walked into an extremely clever trap. If I was wrong, I could expect no mercy and he would gleefully have me put behind bars for the rest of my days. My only saving grace right now was that everyone except two men, Irving and Karavenoff, thought I was dead. It was in Irving’s interests that I remained so but Karavenoff worried me; he was on the fence and would come down on whatever side suited him best. If I was going to make a run for it then I should kill him first to protect my back.

  But I knew that idea was crazy. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as a criminal on the run. There had to be a solution to this whole damn mess. If I thought long enough and hard enough maybe it would come. I wasn’t convinced but I had to give it a go.

  I sat long into the night, stubbing out cigarette end after cigarette end. It was a slow night and a lonely night and as grey dawn came up I dozed a little and woke a little. Finally I couldn’t stand it any more. I put my coat on and went out into the freezing cold air.

  New York is a confusing place. It never really sleeps; while one half goes to bed, the other half gets up to work. At five o’clock in the morning you can buy a second-hand car, or a new suit, or the week’s groceries; not as easily perhaps as at five o’clock in the afternoon but easily enough.

  I walked down the streets; less than one week to Christmas, and tinsel and fairy lights and glittering packages shone out at me from the windows. I felt tired and sad and a million other things, and I didn’t want to be here doing this at all. I thought back on what I had done yesterday and wondered if it really was me that had done that and, if it really was me, how I could now be walking casually along, looking in these windows, thinking about Christmas in childhood, without any remorse, any feeling of guilt about the man who had gone to his death in a crummy elevator in a crummy building, yesterday afternoon.

  It was a long time since I had gone Christmas shopping, trailing round the London stores with my mother, sitting on Santa Claus’s knees in Harrods, Swan & Edgar, D H Evans. I thought about all the long, sometimes happy, sometimes wretched process, of growing up, becoming a man, and now I was a man, and had been a man for a long time, and I was alone, wandering down this cold Manhattan street, feeling like an old toy that had been chucked into a waste bin.

  I spent the day shuffling the streets, drinking eternal cups of black coffee and smoking eternal cigarettes in the cafes that came my way and I came no closer to any solution. Finally in the early evening I hailed a cab, went to Kennedy Airport and bought a ticket on the 10 pm TWA flight to London. The flight was a little under seven hours and, depending on the strength of the tail wind, we were scheduled to arrive at Heathrow Airport at about 9.40 in the morning.

  The stewardess brought me the New York Times. The front page headline read, ‘British politician dead in New York Building collapse mystery.’ The article stated that no cause for the collapse was yet known but there was evidence of an explosion. The IRA was mentioned as possibly being involved but they had not claimed responsibility and there was as yet no clear evidence of any foul play. The article went on to state that the building had been scheduled for demolition under a redevelopment scheme.

  It normally drizzles most of the week before Christmas and this Tuesday morning was no exception. If you ever feel gloomy and despondent, avoid flying into England on a wet day. Not that to have been greeted by blazing sunshine, a temperature of 95 degrees, and a host of naked dancing girls would have made much difference to my mood.

  No one arrested me at the passport control and I walked out into the arrival lounge. I hired a car and drove off onto the M4 and the West Country. The plane had had engine trouble and the tail wind was weak; I switched on the radio to catch the one o’clock news. Not surprisingly the late Anthony Lines MP featured prominently. Considerable advances had been made since the New York Times had gone to press. Lines had definitely been killed by an explosion, which in turn had brought on the collapse of the building, the explosion apparently having taken place in the elevator. The IRA had denied responsibility and none of the other Irish terrorist organisations had as yet claimed any part in it. But whilst his death was given great prominence in the report, what was given even more prominence was the fact of Lines’s being in New York at all; that was a complete mystery to everyone.

  He appeared to have told his wife late on Friday that he had to go to an emergency conference with the Prime Minister and wouldn’t be back until Monday. But the Prime Minister denied all knowledge of this conference and had been seen by numerous people out Christmas shopping all that Saturday. Had Lines gone to a secret meeting with a terrorist group? Why hadn’t the Americans any knowledge that he was coming? Under what name had he flown over since no passenger of his name had been carried by any of the airlines over that weekend? The speculation was well and truly rife. Already the death of Sir Maurice Unwin was being linked with Lines’s by the reporters. The Prime Minister had not yet issued any statement but was expected to later that day. In a strange way it all cheered me up.

  Fifeshire’s country house was deep in the Cotswold hills, on the outskirts of two minute hamlets, and I found it with some considerable difficulty. There were two impressive stone gateposts topped by handsome gargoyles; the gates were open and looked as though they hadn’t been shut in years. Inside the gates the drive dropped sharply down to the right, and as I drove down, the house came into view some way below me. It was a massive Elizabethan manor, sunk deep in the hollow on one side, but looking down over hundreds of acres of rolling fields and hills in the distance on the other. It was a rich man’s house but sufficient parts of the facade, the driveway and the gardens looked in need of some care, not a great deal, but just enough to give it the feel of a private home rather than a National Trust set piece. It was the kind of house that told you, whatever else you might be feeling, that all was all right in the world.

  I rang the doorbell and a rather matronly housekeeper opened the huge oak door.

  ‘I’ve come to see Sir Charles,’ I said.

  She looked at me, surprised. ‘But he’s not here,’ she said, ‘he’s in town.’

  ‘I thought he wasn’t working up there at the moment.’

  ‘Not usually, he isn’t – at present; he’s still convalescing from his, er,’ she couldn’t bring herself to say the word. ‘But some telegram came over the weekend and he drove up very early on Monday morning; we don’t expect him back for a few days.’

  ‘Oh. I had an appointment with him,’ I lied, ‘three o’clock this afternoon.’

  ‘If you like, I’ll ring and tell him you’re here.’

  ‘I’d be most grateful if you would.’

  ‘May I have your name, please?’

  ‘Spade,’ I said.

  She left me on the doorstep and went off inside. After a few minutes she returned:

  ‘Sir Charles is terribly sorry, sir; he says he completely forgot about your appointment. He asks if you will come in and make yourself at home; he will be back down just as soon as he can get away from his office.’

  It didn’t sound to me like the message of an angry man but then Fifeshire never had given much away. I accepted the housekeeper’s offer of tea and biscuits, then fell into a deep sleep in the armchair in front of the roaring inglenook fireplace in the drawing room.

  I awoke with a bolt of cold fear to the unmistakable clattering of a helicopter overhead. My immediate reaction was that the bastard had sent the army to get me. Then I looked at my watch: it was past seven. If he’d wanted me arrested, he’d have done it several hours ago. The huge door opened and in strode a beaming Fifeshire, limping a little, but looking fitter than ever, with attaché case in one hand and newspaper in the other; he dropped them both onto a chair.

  ‘Well, well, good evening, Mr Digger!’ he gave me a firm, warm handshake.

  ‘So yo
u’re still speaking to me,’ I said.

  There was a grin on his face from ear to ear. ‘I purloined a chopper to get down here as quickly as I could; damn traffic’s dreadful otherwise. Look like you’ve been to hell and back – you probably know the way by now.’ He gave me another big grin; he was looking pleased as punch, like some child that’s just got up to some mischief and is waiting for the results of its handiwork to take effect. He picked up the newspaper, the Evening Standard, and thrust it at me. ‘Have you been watching the news on television?’

  ‘No, haven’t heard anything since one o’clock; I’m afraid I fell asleep.’

  He nodded at me to look at the Standard. The thick black type across the top of the front page blazed out the legend: Was Lines a Russian spy? I looked quizzically at Fifeshire.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘read it.’

  ‘On Friday evening in Washington Sir Maurice Unwin, Britain’s attaché to the United States, apparently committed suicide. It is not widely known that Sir Maurice was the Head of MI6 in the US.

  ‘On Sunday afternoon in New York the Home Secretary, Anthony Lines, was murdered by a bomb.

  ‘It has today been learned that Commander Clive Scatliffe, deputy head of MI5, has been missing since Friday night. Intelligence sources report that he boarded an Aeroflot flight in New York, bound for Moscow, late on Sunday. Commander Scatliffe was acting head of MI5 since the hospitalisation of Sir Charles Cunningham-Hope, who was seriously wounded by gunfire when President Battanga was assassinated in his car in August of this year.’

  I read through the rest of the article. It dragged up a number of left-wing remarks made by Lines during the course of his career, analysed his Cambridge education and the left-wing society with which he mixed at the time, and attempted to link the situation with the Philby/Blunt affair of 1980 but without actually producing any concrete evidence. I looked up at Fifeshire.