The High Commissioner

by Jon Cleary

  All at once, more like an actual pain in his head than a thought, Malone wished the assassin’s bullet had found Quentin to-night. There was a horror that he could wish for another man’s death; but Quentin, consciously or unconsciously, was beginning to make too much demand on him. The cord of the pyjamas tightened round his middle, like a lasso; again he was reminded of a woman’s touch by the silk, the touch of Sheila Quentin’s hand. Abruptly, he got out of bed, took off the pyjamas and got back naked between the sheets.

  He fell asleep and dreamed of Quentin and himself handcuffed together in the dock. The judge was Flannery, smiling his warm sincere grin at both of them.

  III

  In the apartment in Exhibition Road Madame Cholon said, “We shall just have to try again.”

  “It’s going to be more difficult from now on.” Pallain’s beard was dark on his face now; it made a sound like sandpaper as he rubbed his palm against it. “They’ll have a guard with him all the time. Why not try someone else? One of the Africans?”

  “Which one? There isn’t an African at the conference who doesn’t have enemies at home. It could be blamed on them, brushed off as having nothing to do with the conference. They would send another delegate and the conference would go on. Africans are too readily expendable. The imperialists have proved that.”

  She borrows from everyone, Pallain thought, even the Communists. She is the complete amoral politician.

  “No, no one else at the conference has Quentin’s influence. The other delegates just makes noises. They will vote when the times comes, but they do not want to go on record as having put forward any motions. Some do not want to offend China, the others do not want to offend America. One does not spit in the eye of the country that is paying one’s bills. At least, not when abroad. At home it is a different thing.”

  “How much longer then do we have?”

  “Not long at all. Two, three days at the most. The man who was with Quentin last night, the one you said seemed suspicious of your car – I think I met him at the reception. I wonder what he is?”

  “He seemed a little more adventurous than the usual junior diplomat. They are generally very intent on self-preservation, so they can survive and be promoted to ambassadors. Do you think he might be a security man?”

  “Perhaps you had better find out. Are you covering the conference to-morrow?”

  “I have to make a show of being a journalist.” Pallain stood up, straightening his tie, shooting his cuffs. He had pretensions to being a dandy, but his face was too rugged, his body too thick: the effect was of a brick in Fortnum and Mason’s wrapping. “When this is over, I hope I can retire.”

  “You should be able to.” Madame Cholon led the way to the door. She showed a hint of gratitude, obliquely, as if it were a weakness: “I hope you will be paid enough.”

  Pallain looked around the apartment. “I’d like to live in something like this, but overlooking the Seine.”

  “Perhaps I shall visit you when I come to Paris,” she smiled, having no intention of it.

  He looked at her, at the slim figure under the ao dais that had learned all the professional tricks of love and was now going to waste. This was the first time he had been alone with her since they had arrived in London. Truong Tho had been dropped at the small flat where he and Pham Chinh were staying in Notting Hill, then Pham Chinh had taken the Zephyr south of the river to dump it. Pallain himself lad come here to Madame Cholon’s apartment by taxi. The night was still young by his timing:

  “This is a big apartment for one woman—”

  The smile went, the eyes turned to black glass. “I never sleep with the help, Jean-Pierre. You are being well paid for what you are doing. There will be no bonuses.”

  He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “It’s my father in me. He always did have an eye for the native women.”

  He went out quickly, slamming the door behind him. He knew he had just nominated himself to be another victim on Madame Cholon’s list. Damn his French tongue: always looking for the biting exit line.

  Chapter Five

  When Malone came downstairs in the morning Joseph was waiting for him in the hall. He looked with a sickened eye at Malone’s suit, then said, “This way, sir. What would you like for breakfast?”

  “What is there?”

  “The cook is at your service, sir. You only have to ask for what you want.”

  “I like a good breakfast. How about a steak with an egg?”

  Joseph was well trained: he managed not to throw up. “Medium or well done, sir?”

  “The steak or the egg?” I’m at war with this bastard, Malone thought.

  “The steak, sir.”

  “Medium. And the egg runny.”

  He followed Joseph into a dining-room and out on to a small patio where Sheila Quentin, in a green silk housecoat, sat at a glass-topped, wrought-iron table. Beyond was a small garden surrounded by high walls; London and the world were shut out, but for how long? Malone sat down and Joseph, the messenger of heresy, went back to the kitchen to order steak and egg for the barbarian’s breakfast. Sheila nodded towards a large jug of orange juice on the table.

  “Are you expecting a big day, Mr. Malone? I heard you ordering a real bush breakfast.”

  “Did I do the wrong thing?”

  “Not at all. I like to see a man eat.”

  Where had he heard that before? His head was full of echoes; the nightmare of the night had still been with him when he woke up. He was unaccustomed to dreaming and it had only added to his exhaustion. But he would need his wits about him to-day and for the next four or five days.

  “How’s your face?”

  He felt the small scab on his chin. He had taken off the Band-aid; he knew from experience that cuts healed quickly on him. He had no doubts that physically he would be able to stand up to anything that might face him in the next few days; it was his emotions that might prove vulnerable. “I’ll survive. Has Mr. Quentin gone?”

  “I made him have breakfast in bed this morning. It was a long time before we both got to sleep last night.” She looked old in the morning light; or anyway middle-aged. Her hair had been brushed and she was wearing lipstick, but she had on no other make-up; the morning sun, bouncing off the white-washed walls of the garden, was cruel to her, exposing the lines that he hadn’t seen last night. She smiled, a sad smile that only added to the look of age in her face. “Usually we both sleep very well.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Quentin. I mean, about—” He flapped his hand, another meaningless gesture but which she understood. With the Irish in him he had never before been at a loss for words, but since entering this house he was becoming almost inarticulate. But dumb gestures were the real lingua franca of tragedy; only actors and playwrights made calamity ring.

  “You have to do your job.” She sipped her coffee, staring into the distance. How far, he could only guess: back to when she had first met Quentin? “He’s a good man, you know. Not just good in his job – he’s excellent at that – but also good in himself.”

  “Did he tell you why he killed – his first wife?”

  She smiled again, dryly this time. “A wife doesn’t have to give evidence against her husband, Mr. Malone.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know you didn’t. Drink your orange juice.” She spread butter thinly on a piece of toast. “Do you think they will try to kill my husband again?”

  “Who? Oh, them. I don’t know.” He looked about him, at the garden neat as a stage set. Dwarf trees grew out of pots that looked as if they had been delivered only that morning; the creeper on the wall looked as if it had been tacked there only an hour ago. Everything looked unreal, like the outdoor garden sets in the old movies you saw on television; he looked up at the sky to make sure it wasn’t just painted canvas. He looked back at Sheila Quentin the shade of a beautiful and happy woman remembered from last night: she, too, was unreal. “I’m out of my depth here. I can’t tell you how
glad I’ll be to step on that plane for home.”

  “With my husband? You’re not very tactful, are you?”

  “I just told you – I’m out of my depth here.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then she smiled, taking the sting out of her last remark. “I’m sorry, Mr. Malone. But now I’m the one who’s going to be untactful. Are you going to the conference to-day with my husband?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Then you had better change into another suit. Do you have a dark one?”

  “Only this one. And a sports jacket. I didn’t expect a long stay.”

  “You’ll be too conspicuous in that among the striped pants and black jackets. You’d better wear something of my husband’s.”

  “I’m not getting into striped pants,” he said emphatically; then grinned. “I can hear the call of duty just so far. After that I get stone deaf.”

  She returned his grin. “I like you, Mr. Malone. Why did you have to be sent to arrest my husband?”

  “I’ve asked myself that several times.” His face sobered.

  “Why?”

  He avoided the question. “I’ll go and buy myself a dark suit. I could do with one, anyway.”

  “There’ll be no need. You can wear one of my husband’s.” The toast crackled in her mouth; her voice came out harsh and dry. “He won’t be needing them much longer. What colour do they wear now in gaol, Mr. Malone?”

  “Don’t,” he said, and leaned across the table to put his hand on hers as she bowed her head and began to weep silently.

  She kept her head lowered for almost a minute while he sat leaning towards her in the attitude of sympathy. Then she looked up, took a handkerchief from the pocket of her housecoat and wiped her eyes. The glare from the white walls was increasing as the sun climbed higher; she picked up a pair of sunglasses and put them on. They were a double defence: she retreated behind them. “A politician’s wife trains herself for a lot of situations. Disappointments, abuse, requests that tear the heart out of you but that you have to refuse. Oh, I don’t mean the wife personally. But any politician’s wife who is worth her salt suffers everything that her husband does. So you train yourself.” She bit her lip. “But never for anything like this. How are my eyes?”

  “The glasses hide them. No one will notice.”

  “Joseph will. He notices everything. I’ll go and repair them before he brings you your steak and egg.” She stood up, pausing for a moment with her hand on the back of her chair. There was a natural grace to all her movements that not even her emotions of the moment could make awkward; he wondered whether she had trained herself to be like this, or whether she was naturally graceful. What had she been like when Quentin had first met her? “You’re a kind man, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t know. A man doesn’t measure his own capacity for kindness – that’s only for philanthropists who want a tax rebate.”

  An eyebrow came up above the sunglasses. “You’re full of surprises.”

  “I surprise myself sometimes. It’s unnerving.” He looked up at her. “I may be kind, or I may just have a sense of guilt. Don’t ask me, Mrs. Quentin. I’m busting a gut not to get too involved with you and your husband.”

  She stared at him for a long time; he could see himself reflected in the sunglasses, a tiny fragile figure. Then she nodded, and he disappeared from the dark mirrors. “You’re right, Mr. Malone. Unfortunately for some of us, involvement is part of human nature. Especially when your nature is a good and honest one.”

  Then she turned and went into the house, leaving Malone wondering if she had been speaking about him, someone else or no one in particular. He had heard her cry of pain, and, by some osmosis he didn’t understand, pain had woken in himself. A cop with too much imagination: he was asking for trouble.

  Then Lisa, cool and beautiful in a mushroom linen suit, came out and sat down at the table. “I’ve had breakfast, but Mrs. Quentin thought you might like company. She’s still upset about last night, isn’t she?”

  He nodded, saved from saying anything by the arrival of Joseph.

  “Your steak and egg, sir,” said the butler, and made it sound as if he were serving the head of John the Baptist.

  “My apologies to the cook,” said Malone, his appetite suddenly gone, “but I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll just have toast and marmalade. Am I being difficult, Joseph?”

  “No, sir. Just wise, if I may be permitted the comment. Will there be anything further?”

  Lisa was watching the fencing between the two men with a smile. She enjoyed observing the relationships between men, a spectator sport that too few women indulged in. She would like to see this almost gauche Australian put the suave Joseph in his place, but she would not bet on him. Joseph had been the uncrowned king of this household too long.

  “I have to go out and buy a suit, a dark one. I’m a standard size, so I can buy one off the peg. Where would you recommend, Joseph?”

  “Madame has already asked me to lay out one of His Excellency’s suits for you—”

  Malone shook his head, remembering the constriction of Quentin’s pyjamas last night. Keep this up and in no time he’d be wearing Quentin’s skin. Again he cursed his imagination: it was like a virus in the brain. “No, I was going to buy one, anyway.” He turned to Lisa. “Has Sergeant Coburn arrived yet?”

  “He’s out in the hall. There are also the two men from the External Affairs Department at Australia House. They come here every morning and ride in with Mr. Quentin. They’re part of the advisory team at the conference.”

  “He’ll be safe enough then,” he said, and was instantly sorry. He saw the shadow cross her face and noticed her hand tighten on the coffee pot she had just picked up. He stared at her, trying to express his regret with his eyes; then he looked up at Joseph, whose face was as impassive as the white wall of the garden behind him. “Would you call me a cab? I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  “Sir, perhaps you would care to have me come with you?”

  Malone suddenly grinned and looked at Lisa. “You think it might be a good idea?”

  “Joseph knows exactly what the well-dressed man should wear.”

  “Point taken,” said Malone, still grinning, and nodded to Joseph. “Okay, Joseph. You and I mightn’t pass for Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, but we’ll give it a go. Ten minutes.”

  The butler went away, taking the steak and egg with him. relieved that disaster had been averted and the aborigines hadn’t yet taken over Belgravia. Malone chewed on toast and marmalade and sipped the coffee Lisa had poured for him. They eyed each other with disguised glances, like strangers in some foreign hotel wondering if they dare risk getting to know each other better. Then Lisa said, “You did a very brave thing last night, chasing that man with the gun.”

  He swallowed toast and embarrassment: he had never been a man who could accept a compliment easily. “It was just a reflex action. I could just as easily have run the other way.”

  “Perhaps. But you didn’t.” She looked down at the cup of coffee she had poured for herself. She was confident and competent when handling the approaches made to her by men; she could not remember when it was last the other way round. She wanted to know this man Malone better, but she feared if it was left to him she would learn nothing. “When are you going back?”

  “Four or five days.” What was she getting at? Had she learned the real reason for his being here?

  “Are you going to look around London?”

  “I won’t have time.”

  “Your first time here and you’re not going to try and see it? This is the most interesting city in the world, don’t you know that? There is a surprise round every corner. There is only one other city that has that quality of surprise – Paris.”

  “I don’t know about Paris, but you’re certainly right about London: it has its surprises. Such as gunmen in its gardens.”

  “All other cities are predictable. Even Rome and
New York.”

  “You’ve been around,” he said, and suddenly felt envious of her. He had never really thought much about travelling and now all at once he knew he had missed something. “What about Berlin? Have you been there?”

  “The Germans are always predictable,” she said, her voice abruptly harsh. He remembered something he had read, that the Dutch, more than anyone else in Europe, hated the Nazis for what they had done. She looked upon Australia as home, but she had inherited European resentments.

  “What about the Asians?” Fashions in enemies changed. The Germans were yesterday’s enemies; who would be to-morrow’s? “The Chinese? The North Vietnamese or the South Vietnamese? Do you predict they might make another attempt to kill your boss?”

  “We don’t know it was any of those.” Her Dutch caution showed.

  “No. But that’s where I’ll lay my money if I have to.”

  “I’d like to know the form better,” she said, picking up his metaphor. “I don’t know the Asians at all.”

  “That’s our trouble,” he said, calling her an Australian now. “We’ve lived next door to them for almost a hundred and eighty years and never even tried to get to know them.”

  “We’re trying to remedy that now, Mr. Malone.”

  Quentin stood in the doorway, dressed in dark jacket and striped trousers, a Homburg hat in one hand and a black brief-case in the other. Behind him were Sergeant Coburn and two other men.

  “Mr. Larter and Mr. Edgar.” Quentin introduced the two strangers, not in an off-hand way but with due regard to each of them. He had all the small qualities that in some would induce loyalty. Next week, Malone thought, there is going to be an awful lot of people with shattered illusions. This was not going to be just one man’s tragedy. “Each of them has spent several years in Asia. What did you want to know about it?”