The High Commissioner

by Jon Cleary

  “If you can positively identify him as the man you saw in Belgrave Square last night, we can hold him a while longer. Perhaps till the conference finishes.”

  Malone looked at Quentin, who said, “We’ll wait dinner for you. I’ll tell my wife you’ve met an old friend and been delayed.” He looked at Coburn. “We’re keeping it from Mrs. Quentin that the bomb was intended for me. I’d appreciate it if you kept that in mind, Sergeant.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be troubled again, sir,” Coburn said. “There’s only a few more days till the conference enids, then you can relax.”

  “Yes,” said Quentin, and this time Malone caught the ironical glance. This time Denzil also caught it and suddenly went red.

  Malone, walking cat-footed in his pinching shoes, went out with Denzil. As they passed Lisa in Ihe outer office she said, “Is His Excellency going home now, Mr. Malone? Mrs. Quentin has been on the phone. She sounds worried.”

  “What about?”

  “She saw the news on television, about the bomb explosion down on the Embankment.” She had been putting on her make-up when they had come out of Quentin’s office; a new lip pressed down on an old lip, but it was also an expression of concern. “That had nothing to do with Mr. Quentin, did it?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Malone, and winced.

  “What’s the matter? Are you ill? Is there something wrong?” She didn’t believe him. She’s like all women, he thought: they’re all pessimists. It didn’t help that what she suspected was the truth.

  He lifted one foot. “My shoes are killing me.”

  “Oh, is that all?” She looked relieved, smiled at both of them. “I’d just hate to have anything happen to—” She nodded towards the door of Quentin’s office.

  “We all should,” said Denzil, and smiled reassuringly. He tucked in his belly. “We’ll look after him.”

  The two men went on down out of the building. A black police car was drawn up by the kerb, its uniformed driver reading the sports pages of the Evening Standard. He dropp ed the paper, jumped out and opened the door as Denzil and Malone approached.

  “How are the scores?” Denzil asked.

  “Our batsmen are in trouble, sir.”

  “They always are. We don’t have the men we used to.” Denzil gestured for Malone to get into the back seat, then got in beside him. “Are you interested in cricket?”

  Malone nodded. “I played regularly up till a couple of years ago.”

  “Batsman or bowler?”

  “I was a fast bowler. Or supposed to be.”

  Denzil nodded approvingly and looked at him with new interest. Anyone who played cricket must be a good type. “I used to be one myself. When I was out in Nairobi. Never got any first-class cricket there, unfortunately. I used to play for the M.C.C. when I was home on leave. Once bowled Wally Hammond for a duck.” He nodded his head, remembering his moment of glory; he had assured himself of his place in his own particular heaven. Malone had met the sort before: the Elysian Fields had a cricket pitch marked out in their middle, the pavilion bar was always open so the good and the just could go on talking about past matches for the rest of eternity. Denzil continued to muse for a while, then he looked up and smiled the surprising smile. “My wife thinks it was the worst thing ever happened to me. Said it retarded my mental development by twenty years. Women never understand, do they?”

  “That’s what’s kept me a bachelor.”

  Denzil looked sideways at him for a moment, the smile still in place; then abruptly it slid off his face and he said, “How long have you known the High Commissioner?”

  Malone knew it was more than just an idle question; Denzil was not the sort who asked idle questions. “Why?”

  “You seem to have an understanding with each other.” He nodded down at Malone’s feet. “I don’t know any other ambassador who’d let his security man take off his shoes in front of him. Except some of these new darky ones.” His voice was edged with contempt. He had spent too long in Africa, seen an empire the: he longed for the good old days, when he had bowled Wally Hammond for a duck, when the darkies knew their place.

  “We met only yesterday.”

  “Um. I suppose it’s that other business then—” He stopped, as if he had only just remembered the policeman in the front seat.

  “I guess that’s it,” said Malone. “It does make a difference. Gives us a mutual interest. Just like you and me, with cricket.”

  His voice was bland. Denzil looked at him, trying to read something into it; but couldn’t Malone smiled back at him: in twenty-four hours he had become adept at using the hypocrite’s mask. He wondered if it would come in handy back in Sydney when he would have to report to Flannery, the master of the game.

  Denzil’s room at Scotland Yard was not a big one; the Special Branch, Malone guessed, were the poor relations. It did have an outside view: trees, old men on the Embankment, a pleasure boat coming back from a day trip, its passengers singing “Knees up, Mother Brown,” as they passed the Mother of Parliaments. Denzil waved Malone to a chair, picked up a phone and asked for Pallain to be sent in.

  “Oh, and have someone check with the American Embassy on one of their men. His name’s Jamaica. Find out all you can about him. If he’s there, ask him if he would mind coming over here. He might be able to help us with this chap Pallain.”

  By the time Pallain came in, Denzil had got his pipe going. He sat behind his desk, rock-solid, no nonsense: he wasn’t going to let any threatening Frog half-caste get away with anything. But Pallain had got over his indignation or whatever had been exciting him. He came in, sat down and nodded amiably at both men.

  Denzil ignored Pallain, looked at the plain-clothes man who had brought him in. “Has he changed his tune, Sergeant?”

  “Why not ask me?” Pallain said before the sergeant could reply. “No, I haven’t changed my tune. All I’ve done is to revise my opinion of British law and justice.”

  Malone had expected Denzil to bluster, instead of which the superintendent looked at Pallain and smiled. The man was a complicated sum of contradictions; Malone wondered if the real Denzil ever got to the surface. Perhaps the years in Africa had ruined him: prejudices had been laid over him like false skins.

  “We’re really not too bad, Mr. Pallain. I’ve heard the police in Saigon are much worse. Or is that just propagane a?”

  It was Pallain’s turn to smile. “I wouldn’t know, Superintendent. I have never been picked up by the police in Saigon. Out there I’m accepted for what I am, a respectable newspaperman. I still haven’t been told why I was brought here.”

  “We just want some information.” Denzil was polite, patient. “We are investigating a bomb explosion. If you are a good reporter, you must have heard about it.”

  “I’ve been in custody most of the afternoon. How would I have heard about it? What happened – someone killed? And how do you connect me with it?” Pallain’s voice rose just a little: it could have been indignation or fear, Malone wasn’t sure.

  Denzil ignored the flood of questions and put one of his own: “Why were you visiting Madame Cholon at lunch-time?”

  “I’ve already told you. I wanted to interview her.”

  “Why? Who is she?”

  “I was told she was a very rich woman from Singapore.” Pallain’s voice was calm again, almost bored. “I was just going to do a gossip piece on her.”

  “You leave an important diplomatic conference to go and write a gossip piece on a woman you know nothing about?” Denzil puffed out a cloud of smoke, then brushed it away with his hand: the gesture was also a dismissal of what Pallain was trying to tell him.

  “I work for an agency, Superintendent,” Pallain explained patiently. “An agency man does everything.”

  “What’s so special about Madame Cholon, apart from her being rich?”

  Pallain hesitated; for a moment it looked as if he might tell Denzil to go to hell. Then he said, “I might ask you the same question. Why are you so
interested in her? Does she have something to do with this bomb explosion you spoke of?”

  Denzil smiled again, cold as the wink of light on a dagger. “I’ll ask the questions, Mr. Pallain. Where does Madame Cholon get her money?”

  “I was told she had big business interests.”

  “What sort of interests?”

  Pallain shrugged; then Malone said, “Gambling interests?”

  Pallain’s face showed nothing. He looked at Malone, then at Denzil. “Who is this man, Superintendent? He’s not English, he doesn’t have your accent. What’s he doing here?”

  “This is Mr. Malone. It doesn’t matter who he is, he has a right to be heie.” Denzil then glanced at Malone. “Is this the man you saw last night in Belgrave Square?”

  Before Malone could answer, Pallain said, “Saw me where?” He laughed, a cough of incredulity, of contempt; in Malone’s ears it sounded like an echo of Flannery’s laugh. “What the hell would I be doing there?”

  “You were sitting in a car in Chesham Street, just off the square,” said Denzil.

  “I wasn’t there, but even if I were, what’s criminal about that? Aren’t men allowed to sit with girls in cars in Eigland?” He smiled, shaking his head. “You never have encouraged romance, have you?”

  “You weren’t romancing,” said Denzil.

  “No? What was I supposed to be doing then?”

  Suddenly Malone knew they were trapped: they would have to let this man go. He looked at Denzil and said, “He’s not the man, Superintendent.”

  Denzil almost bit off the stem of his pipe. He coughed on the smoke in his mouth; then he nodded at the plain-clothes man. “Take him outside, Sergeant. But don’t let him go just yet.”

  Pallain stood up. “This won’t be the last of this. I have a French passport.”

  “Anglo-French relations have been cool for some time, Mr. Pallain. Another small complaint won’t be noticed. Now if General de Gaulle didn’t say non so often—” Again there was the warm smile, almost breezy this time. “Au revoir – just in case we do see each other again.”

  Pallain recovered some of his poise; he bowed his head to Denzil and Malone. The best Frenchmen never lost their poise and dignity: he would have to remember that. “What if I said non to that?”

  The smile widened. “We English can be very deaf at times.”

  As soon as the door closed on Pallain and the plain-clothes man, Denzil dropped his smile as if it hurt and looked at Malone. “It was you, Sergeant, who suggested we pick him up. We don’t like being made to look fools here at Special Branch.”

  Malone wanted to take off his shoes again, but he knew that would be a mistake. “If we had told him what we suspected him of doing last night, that he drove the car in which that bloke with the gun got away – We forgot he was a newspaperman, Superintendent. Suppose we hadn’t been able to hold him, he’d have gone out and in to-morrow morning’s papers the story would have been right across the front pages. That’s what Quentin is trying to avoid.”

  Denzil’s pipe had gone out. He didn’t attempt to relight it, but laid it down on an ashtray made out of some hoof: something he had shot in Africa? Malone wondered. He glanced around the room while Denzil sat pondering. A pair of small horns, mounted on a board, hung on one wall; on either side of it were two wooden masks, the sightless eyes fixed on a photograph that hung on the opposite wall. Denzil, in white shirt and shorts and tropical helmet, was flanked by two native policemen: it was something from a bygone era, fly-specked and faded and dusty: the chars who came in to this office were not interested in the memories of someone else’s past. Malone looked back at Denzil, suddenly feeling sorry for the man. Whatever you thought of the old British Empire, and Malone had been brought up in a household that equated it with Hades, it had been a way of life for this man across the desk, the only way of life.

  “What are we trying to do? Save a man’s life or save a conference?” Denzil rubbed a sandy eyebrow abstractedly. “That’s the worst burden of this job, Sergeant. We’re asked to be even more impersonal than the ordinary policeman. We’re supposed to look beyond the man we’re trying to protect – or trying to arrest – to the idea or the position he represents. It isn’t easy.” He tugged on his eyebrow and worked his thin lips over each other. He glanced up at the photograph on the wall: the younger Denzil had had a much easier job. Then he said, “When you take Quentin back to Sydney, if he’s found guilty, will they hang him?”

  “They don’t have the death penalty in New South Wales. I don’t know what his plea would be. He might even try pleading guilty to manslaughter and not guilty of murder. If they accepted that, he could get off with anything from seven to ten years.”

  “Whatever he gets, his life will still be over. The life that means something to him.” Again he glanced at the photograph. “You know what we’re trying to do, Sergeant? We’re trying to keep a man alive for what may be far worse than a quick, painless death.”

  Malone said tonelessly, “What are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing,” said Denzil, and sounded weary. The phone rang and as he reached for it he said, “We’ll keep him alive. That black chappie up there in the photo, the one on the right, he was gored by a rhino. I spent three days nursing him, but in the end he thed. Then I got blind drunk for three days. I don’t like to see a man the, Sergeant. Anyone at all.” Then he picked up the phone. “Yes?”

  Malone eased off his shoes; he knew now that Denzil wouldn’t mind. He sat back in his chair, feeling as weary as Denzil had sounded. Even his body felt spent, something that hadn’t happened to him in a long time; he had always been a physical fitness addict, had been able to bowl all day at cricket or play flat out for the full eighty minutes of a Rugby game. But now the exhaustion of his mind was seeping down into his muscles and bones, was weakening him like some creeping disease. He suddenly longed for the week-end and the plane for home. Fate was really piling it on Quentin: Malone wondered if he, too, was now longing for the plane back to Sydney.

  Then Denzil put down the phone and said, “They know nothing about your man Jamaica at the American Embassy. They’ve never heard of him.”

  II

  “Some walnut torte, sir?” asked Joseph.

  “My husband has a very sweet tooth, Mr. Malone,” said Sheila Quentin. “He is the despair of our cook. Every night she has to dream up something exotic for dessert.”

  Quentin said, “I hate diplomatic dinners. Except the Americans and the Austrians, they have a sweet tooth, too. But the others always try to fob you off with some sort of ice. Especially the British. Their dinners taste like Blackpool Night Out.” He opened his mouth to a forkful of torte, nodded appreciatively at the butler. “Cook’s done it again, Joseph. Tell her I’ll recommend her for an O.B.E.”

  Malone, enjoying the torte, watched Quentin covertly. The High Commissioner was as relaxed as if the conference were already over and a great success; it was as if he had nothing to worry about now but a holiday trip home, then a return here to another tour of duty. All through the meal he had been joking, keeping the conversation going like a television interviewer but with less banality, prompting the others themselves into jokes and repartee. There had been no sign of strain, not even when Sheila had asked how today’s session of the conference had gone.

  “Not as well as yesterday,” Quentin had said, then chewing with relish on stuffed chicken breast; whatever had happened today, it had not affected his appetite. “I don’t know whether I’m telegraphing my punches or something, but one man there today, one of the Africans, had an immediate answer to everything I proposed. That hasn’t happened before. All these delegates, maybe because they’re inexperienced, I don’t know, but they’re great ones for saying nothing till the next day. As if they have to go home at night and get instructions. But not today. This chap was on the ball all day.”

  “Constructively?” Lisa asked.

  “Anything but. It was a black face with a Chinese voice. He had all the answ
ers I’d have expected from Peking. And he had them pat.”

  “More wine, sir?” Joseph had said to Malone, and Malone had nodded. He had not been a wine drinker back home, drinking a beer with his meals if he drank anything. Occasionally when he took a girl out to dinner he would order wine, but he had never really developed a taste for it. Now all at once his palate had changed. It would kill his old Irish mum, with her steak and kidney pie and rhubarb tart washed down with a nice cup of tea. He looked about the large dining-room, at the green silk walls, the deep orange curtains, the Drysdale painting in which the orange of the curtains was repeated; then he looked at the table, at the silverware, the lace placemats, the glasses pastel-coloured with the wine they held. This was gracious living, something he had idly glanced at on the women’s pages of newspapers back home; and he was surprised at how much he enjoyed it.

  “What are you smiling at?” Lisa asked.

  “Thinking of my old Irish mum again. She always suspects people who drink wine with their meals. Thinks it’s a sinful foreign habit aimed at spoiling good plain cooking.” He grinned, dropping the Irish brogue he had assumed. “Gracious living isn’t up her street.”

  “She sounds like an aunt who brought me up—” said Quentin, and went on to describe something that had happened years ago. He’s so relaxed, Malone marvelled, that he can now reminisce about something he must have tried to keep buried all these years. But how real would the people from the past be for him? Was John Corliss, as well as Freda Corliss, also dead? Malone had once read that everyone’s life was a fiction, if not in full at least in part; and he had seen the proof of that so many times, had been aware of it even in himself. Which was the real man behind the handsome smiling face at the head of the table? Did even Quentin (or Corliss) himself know?

  Then dinner was finished and Joseph said, “Shall I serve coffee in the drawing-room, ma’am?”

  Sheila nodded, but Quentin said, “I think Mr. Malone and I will have ours in here. Bring us a brandy, too, Joseph.”

  The two women rose; and Sheila, suddenly grave now after the enjoyment of the last hour, said, “What are you going to talk about?”