by John Gardner
They were in the office Gus had been given at the shop because he was up from Warminster a great deal of the time these days.
Fat Martin looked dubious. ‘We don’t know,’ he said, looking at the floor. ‘To tell you the truth, we don’t really know if the guy’s quirky at all —’
‘Oh, come on!’ from Carole.
‘Stop bickering,’ Gus snapped. ‘Let me hear the full fairytale.’
‘We haven’t got the complete fantasy if you want the truth,’ again from Fat Martin.
‘There is strong evidence.’ Carole stood her ground. ‘Look, Gus, we did a bit of a naughty.’
Gus Keene sighed, then shrugged and said they had better tell all.
‘This began with old Stalks.’ Carole took a deep breath. ‘Remember, she said Alexander might be a little, well, on the iffy side. We’ve been getting nowhere with anybody. You’ve seen the transcripts. Barbara’s been totally cleaned out. She adds nothing new. Friend Andrew is a pompous prat, but he knows how interrogations work. He’s been damned difficult but he’d win in a straight fight. You could say he’s co-operated fully. Then I remembered all the stuff you brought in from Stalks — the hints that Alex Railton had a quirky sex life with his wife.’
Gus nodded. Under his breath he muttered ‘Delia Railton; née Butcher.’ Aloud he said, ‘I rather thought that was merely a bit of SM or leather suits and things. Bondage even.’
Carole shook her head. ‘It’s little girl stuff. Gym slips, white stockings, blue serge drawers. That’s how Alex gets his rocks off with Delia.’
‘And how have you come by this fascinating, and probably useless, information, Carole?’
‘Well. First —’
‘We burgled his place to get a look-see,’ Martin grunted.
‘Great.’ Gus managed to suppress his real anger. ‘You walked in and just had a look around?’
‘We took some pictures.’
‘Oh good. If there’s anything we can use, how d’you propose I clear it?’
‘You could back-date an OK.’ Carole’s voice betrayed the fact that she knew Gus would do nothing of the sort.
‘How expert was the break-in?’
‘Very. It’s a straightforward Yale which took American Express.’
‘I mean are they likely to suspect you’ve been nosing around?’
‘No way. He doesn’t know we took pix of his cavortings either.’
‘What cavortings?’
Carole delved into her shoulder-bag and produced a large envelope from which she took a pile of grainy prints. Gus turned each over, his face deadpan as he looked at Alex Railton and his wife playing sexual games in their living room. She was dressed in the full schoolgirl gear, with her hair in plaits and the pair of them doing extraordinary things to one another.
‘So he likes to see his wife dress up and they play fantasy games.’ Gus threw the pictures onto the table. ‘For all you know, it could be her kick.’
‘No.’ Carole had another envelope in her hand.
‘How did you get those?’ Gus inclined his head towards the photographs on the table.
Martin muttered things about shrubbery and a gap in the curtains, plus some camera jargon.
Gus sighed, reaching for the other envelope. ‘Ah,’ he said, looking at the prints. ‘Regular little surveillance team, you two. What about the questions and answers?’ The second set of pictures showed Alex Railton on the move, round and about Cheltenham. He sat in a car watching a children’s playground; there was one of him offering a bag of sweets to a small throng of girls — all between ten and fifteen years old, and wearing similar school uniforms to the one Delia wore in the other photographs. There were several of him sitting in a snackbar which appeared to be frequented by young girls; and others of Alexander loitering — playgrounds, streets, parks, school gates.
‘Dynamite, eh?’ Carole smiled.
‘Depends. I asked you where the question and answer routines went to while you were playing at jolly James Bond?’
‘They went nowhere, Gus,’ Martin answered. ‘Absolutely nowhere. We hit the bugger with everything. He still won’t admit to having been in the Eccleston Square house, even when we showed him all the evidence — and that’s been going on for months now. The same with Andrew. Barbara’s the only straight one, and she’s bloody miserable.’
‘So we thought we might dig a bit.’ Carole looked pleased.
‘And what am I expected to do with these?’ Gus gestured in the general direction of the photographs.
‘Couldn’t you loosen his memory a bit? Spot of pressure on the right nerve?’
Fat Martin muttered the word ‘blackmail’, under his breath.
‘Neither of you has yet learned about Andrew and Alexander Railton, have you?’ Gus looked dangerously angry. ‘Neither of you really know anything about the Railtons as a family. Andrew and Alexander would be the ones who’d shout “Fire! Police! Ambulance!” if we tried that kind of stunt. Tried to burn them. None of these,’ he tapped the pile of prints, ‘are going to help us one iota.’ He sighed again. ‘In fact they prove simply that he is probably a bit on the quirky side. If there’s a case of child molestation in the area, we can tell the cops where to start looking. That’s all, and I should imagine that Alex Railton’s future freedom is seriously at risk. He’s more likely to be pulled by the cops, then we’ve lost him for ever and a day.’
‘People like that are a security risk. You know it, Gus. We know it.’ Carole had two red spots flushed high on her pretty cheeks. ‘Have you got anything from the folks who live on the hill? Or Naldo’s parents?’ She saw Gus Keene’s face as she said it. She had been his mistress long enough to know that hard evil-eyed look. ‘Christ, Gus, you care about these people, don’t you? You really care about blessed Sir Caspar’s reputation, and Naldo’s conscience. And Barbara — all of them. You probably care about their American relatives as well. Gus, they’re just a load of ingrate stuck-up snob shits. Over-privileged, over-wealthy, and over here. I don’t like breaking the law to get stuff like the dirt on Alexander, but that’s how we work, isn’t it?’
Keene stood, like a statue, unmoving, only his hard eyes and the set of his mouth betrayed the terrible anger. ‘Sit down. Both of you. Sit down,’ he almost whispered.
‘Those two families are like a secret apostolic succession,’ Carole went on, disregarding all the signs of anger building up in Keene.
‘You’re so wrong.’ Gus was still in control of himself. ‘Those two families have had a few people in the trade — our trade — but only a few. There are Railton and Farthing doctors, politicians who know nothing of intelligence, lawyers — even a Farthing dentist, and a Railton who runs a charity. But, yes, Carole. Yes, I do care about those who have been, or are, members of the intelligence and security communities. You want to know why I care?’ He did not pause for an answer. ‘I care because our profession is honourable —’
‘Second oldest, and just as sordid,’ Carole sneered.
Gus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he barked. ‘Yes, we’re whores, and like whores we provide a necessary service. Not to individuals, but to our country. We do the dirty jobs: the jobs the press call stinking and underhanded. The politicians shout and rave and accuse us of operating as though we’re above the law. We have to operate that way. You know it. I know it. God save us, Carole, you and Martin have just done it, and you felt it was necessary. OK, why do we do it? Because we believe in freedom of thought, of speech and of movement. Our way of life, like the American way, is imperfect — of course it is. But would you prefer the Soviet way? Or any totalitarian way? No, you wouldn’t. Here we can criticize the government in public; here we can read what we like and more or less print and say what we like. Try doing that in a totalitarian state — Communist or Fascist. We can do it, which makes us vulnerable as hell, so we’re the people who put a ring around our vulnerability. So don’t ever talk to me about our job being dirty. It’s meant to be dirty, it’s meant to sail close to the wind,
it’s meant to cripple and maim people’s minds …’
‘What about the moral issues?’ Carole snapped. ‘I feel filthy sometimes.’
‘Moral issues?’ Gus was in full flood now. ‘What moral issues?’
‘Opening up people’s private lives; becoming peeping Toms; listening at keyholes …’
‘Which you’ve just been doing. OK, not nice, but we would not be carrying out our charter if we didn’t poke around a bit. Supposing the Prime Minister goes on a trip to a totalitarian country — the Soviet Union or Argentina, say. Suppose he goes missing for a couple of days. Do we sit on our bums? Do we hell. We put the PM under the microscope. We put trade union leaders under the microscope if we have to, or some far right-wing idiot. It isn’t nice, but we do it, just as we pull military and economic intelligence out of the sky, or from some little turncoat who doesn’t like the way he’s forced to live. We do it in the name of an imperfect freedom; and don’t ever tell me, Carole Coles, that it isn’t a job that has to be done. You do it, or you get out. Understand?’
They had heard it all before, of course, and they had used the same arguments themselves when other people had a go at the intelligence and security services. But they would go on questioning the morality. It was good, they would say, for their souls.
4
Gus spent the next four days with Naldo’s father and mother, James and Margaret Mary. Though they both looked tired and old, the wily Gus knew better than to put down his guard. These were old Railtons, who knew where many bodies were buried. This was no time for tea and sympathy, so, even though the talks appeared to be informal, and were often conducted over tea and cakes, he read between the lines, like some intellectual who could read the sub-plots of Shakespeare’s plays between the lines of blank verse.
They went through Caspar’s work during the First World War, then he zeroed in on the period when Caspar had resigned from the service.
‘Didn’t see much of the old horse then.’ James sucked his teeth and took another bite of cake. ‘You see, I was out of it as well, as you must know, Gus. I didn’t see eye to eye with the management either. It’s all on record. Personality clash, I think they called it. Load of balls, that. I just couldn’t take on a job they wanted me to do. Supposed to be impartial, the service — and Five. The job wasn’t impartial, it was for the good of a political party, not for the good of country. They lured me back, of course, but I was out for almost the same length of time as Caspar. Didn’t see much of him, though. Always popping off abroad. We spent most of the time living it up, didn’t we, darling?’ He turned to his wife.
‘If you call going to concerts and recitals in London living it up,’ Margaret Mary laughed, light and high-pitched. ‘That’s what we did. That and the odd trip to Bournemouth. Mr Keene, it was wonderful. For the first time in our married lives I didn’t have to share James with the service.’
‘Only with the family.’ For a second there, James sounded very young again.
Gus thought, ‘I bet you didn’t keep a diary.’ Then he put it into a question.
‘Diary? I should think not. Ah,’ James looked as though he had suddenly realized what Keene was getting at. ‘Caspar. Caspar’s bloody diary.’ A sip of tea, his hand steady as a rock. ‘Bloody fool. Thought Cas knew better’n to keep things in writing.’
‘And what about your son, Mr Railton? What about Naldo?’
Margaret Mary sighed, just audible, in the background. ‘You know better than that, Gus.’ James put down his tea cup. ‘I don’t have all of it, but he’s operational, isn’t he?’
‘He’s missing. Probably in the USSR.’
‘He’s also guardian of Caspar’s diary.’ A wolfish smile on James’s face.
‘And you know things about that, don’t you, Mr James?’ Gus was doing his cosying up routine.
‘I’ll tell you what I know. Things I wouldn’t tell people like Willis MW.’
‘Should you …?’ Margaret Mary began.
‘On one condition, Gus, because I believe you’ve probably guessed some of it already; just as I believe you’d keep a solemn promise to leave my name out of anything that goes to this bloody Credit committee.’
‘Naturally, though I might have to report directly to the Old Man.’
‘C? C knows it already.’ James then went on to tell of Caspar’s request concerning the removal of certain items from Eccleston Square, and the setting of traps within the house to make certain nobody else went in unannounced.
Gus went back to the shop and looked up James’s dossier in the registry. There was nothing at all about his time out of the service except one exit from the country. It was in 1937, the Dover-Calais ferry, and a train to Paris where he had disappeared. Margaret Mary did not go with him. Nobody had any thoughts on reasons. No marginal notations like those in Caspar’s file. ‘What did you do between the wars, Daddy?’ Gus asked himself. Then he went back and asked James about Paris.
‘Oh yes. ’37, or was it ’38?’ the old man said as though memory was failing him.
‘June 1937. Out for a month.’ Gus supplied.
‘Yes. Yes, I remember. Proper little gadabout, wasn’t I? Fancy them watching ports and aerodromes, as we used to call them. Did the same for Caspar, did they?’
‘I suspect they had a little list of all the old team. Immigration would make notes and send them back.’
‘Funny, I thought everyone was getting a little slack about that kind of thing.’
They talked for an hour and Gus only realized later that James had said nothing about his reason for going to Paris. ‘Some other time,’ Gus thought.
On his way into the shop he saw certain faces: people leaving as though they had been in for the afternoon, as they had — Indigo Belper, David Barnard, Arden Elder, Beryl Williamson et al. The Credit committee still met once a month.
‘Not disbanded?’ Gus asked C. He had come in to give the chief the full strength about Caspar’s approach to James, and how James had fielded it and passed the catch to Naldo.
‘I keep them on the go.’ C was looking at Bosch again. ‘Keep them at it, in the hope they’ll see sense.’
Out of interest, Gus asked him about James’s dossier, admitting he had not been able to pin James down about Paris.
C gave what passed as a laugh. ‘You won’t either. Old James is a sly dog. I know what he was up to.’
‘Oh?’
‘James loves his wife dearly, as we all do. But there was someone else at that time. Worked in the secretariat. Nice little thing. Blonde, called Alice something. James was spending time with her before he went private. The Paris trip was a bit on the side, Gus. June can be a wicked month in Paris. Don’t know how he squared it away with Margaret Mary.’
‘Alice?’ Gus mused.
‘Alice … Alice Pritchard. Married quite well, I think. Someone in the trade. Wartime thing, of course. She still lives. Yorkshire, I believe. He died. Bomb during the blitz. Forget his name. Might’ve been Ross. Yes, Len Ross. Agent-runner. Spain, Portugal, that kind of lark. Leonard Cyril Ross. Toddled to and fro from Lisbon mostly, then got himself killed in the blitz. Poor old Alice.’
Gus made his excuses and left. The Old Man had a good memory, he thought. But is it good enough?
So the months went by and other things occupied the minds of Gus, Carole and Fat Martin — Ireland, and the constant battles against the PIRA, who had become very active again, trying to lead the North on its inevitable journey towards the Kremlin, cloaking its activities in old clothes of spite and vengeance; problems in the Middle East; clashes throughout the world. They went on doing their jobs, and, every few weeks, when there was time to spare, they returned to the problem of the late Caspar Railton, and the current devious ways of certain members of the Railton family.
5
Once the legal papers arrived in Moscow certifying that his marriage to Barbara was over, Naldo could not escape from the situation in which he found himself. Now, both Kati and her father, old Caspa
r’s friend of the 1930s, General Spatukin, began to put the pressure on. If he wanted to maintain the fiction, Naldo would have to marry the girl.
‘Comes with the job, Nald,’ Arnie told him, walking in one of the parks, out of sight and sound from surveillance. By now the months had pulled them into the summer of 1967. ‘They’ll not believe they have you, body and soul, until you pass that little test.’
‘They believe you?’ Things were taking much longer than Naldo had calculated. Three years had gone by and he hated, not only Moscow, but the strain of working in this kind of cover.
‘I think so.’
‘You haven’t taken that long-promised Vietnam trip yet.’ Naldo had allowed suspicion to run away with him. He jumped at shadows, saw surveillance teams wherever he went, imagined they were still stealing sound from his apartment.
‘Any time, my old son. Here, a week can mean a year, and a day can mean an hour. You’ve learned that, haven’t you?’
‘You getting anything back to Langley?’
‘A little. The Vietnam thing’s been laid on from Langley. I meet an agent face-to-face. No surveillance from the Sovs. We exchange information. I give what I have, I get some chicken feed back to keep the Ks sweet. I have a line into the embassy, and I guess that can be firmed up.’ He said all this without even looking at Naldo. Then — ‘As for you, Nald, you’ve given precious little but some expertise. They’ll expect a commitment.’
‘Then I have to do it? I have to go through a farcical marriage with Kati?’ Naldo asked the air around him, not expecting, and not getting, a reply from Arnold.
‘After you’ve done it, the general will be more disposed to arrange the matter we really came for,’ Arnold finally said.
‘Alex’ll be dead of old age before we get around to that.’