The High Commissioner

by Jon Cleary

  Malone hesitated, but he had been a policeman too long: he couldn’t deny an interest in any suspect. “Okay, where is she?”

  “Right now, I don’t know. But she’s to meet me to-n ght at Fothergill’s. She may or may not turn up. But you mght reckon it’s worth a try.”

  “Where’s Fothergill’s?” But Jamaica had hung up. Malone put down the phone and stared with gloomy irritation at himself in the gilt-framed mirror above the fireplace. Why did he have to be so interested in Madame Cholon? Curiosity had killed too many coppers. This wasn’t his beat; why couldn’t he leave it to Denzil and the Special Branch? He reached for the phone, the door opened and Lisa came back in, and he heard himself say, “Do you know a place called Fothergill’s?”

  She looked at him with amused surprise. “So you’re a gambling man after all? Remember I said you looked like a racecourse tipster?”

  “Am I some sort of escape valve for you?” he said irritably. All day people had been fretting his patience; he used her now as his own escape valve. “I mean, do you get fed up being diplomatically polite all day?”

  Then it was his turn to be surprised, for she blushed: in that cool, slightly mocking face it was like a sudden rush of fever. “Sorry. Maybe I’m more Australian than I thought. Isn’t it a national habit, always mocking the other fellow? It’s part of the national inferiority complex.”

  He wasn’t going to retreat too quickly. “The last thing you have is an inferiority complex. What’s Fothergill’s? Some sort of gambling club?”

  “It’s the gambling club. A sort of millionaires’ Creck-ford’s.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “I’ve been there a couple of times.”

  “On your salary?” It had been a long day: he was finding it hard to control his sarcasm.

  “You’re a bluntly inquisitive man, aren’t you?”

  “Another national habit.”

  She pursed her lips, then said, “Are you going to fight all the time, Mr. Malone? I don’t think we’re in the right atmosphere for petty little spats. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” he said shortly. Christ, how insensitive did she think he was? Then he relented, relaxed a little and worked hard to smile at her: he wondered how it looked on his face, but the mirror was behind him. “Okay, let’s declare an armistice. Now about Fothergill’s—?”

  Again she pursed her lips; it seemed a habit of hers before she put forward suggestions that she thought might not be accepted. “If you want to go there, would you like me to go with you? You have to be introduced.”

  He looked at her, brows creased in puzzlement. “I know I’m being bluntly inquisitive again, but how is it you’re so welcome at this joint?”

  “It’s no joint, I assure you. As for your question – well, sometimes my duties here call for being more than just a secretary. Sometimes I have to stand in as a dinner partner. One night I was partner to an oil sheik – and afterwards he wanted to go to Fothergill’s. I’ve been there a couple of times since – with a grazier from back home and with a Chinese businessman from Hong Kong. Fothergill’s seem to think I brought them there. I’m just waiting for them to offer me commission.”

  “Your commission on me to-night won’t break them.”

  “How do you bet?”

  “When I do, it’s usually two bob each way on a horse.” He grinned. “I’m sort of reckless.”

  “They wouldn’t know what a two-shilling piece is at Fothergill’s. If you aren’t rich enough to have your bank books cross-indexed, they don’t want to know you.”

  Malone laughed, suddenly liking her. “Will you take me there?”

  “Take you where?” Quentin stood in the doorway.

  “I’ve just had a call from that feller Jamaica,” Malone said. “He’s expecting Madame Cholon at a club called Fothergill’s to-night. I might need an introduction to get in.”

  “Lisa’s not going with you,” Quentin said firmly.

  Lisa looked in puzzlement from one man to the other. “What is all this? Who’s Madame Cholon?”

  Each man hesitated, waiting on the other to reply. Finally it was Malone who said, “We think she might have had something to do with that bomb explosion this afternoon.”

  Lisa looked quickly at Quentin, her eyes opening wide in shock. “That bomb was meant for you!” Her composure cracked: she was being made confidante to more secretes than a private secretary expected. It was her job to intercept junior officers, newspapermen, unwanted visitors; but not assassins. It was almost as if she felt she had fallen dawn on her job. “Oh, my God, they really do mean to kill you!”

  Quentin looked over his shoulder, then he came into the room, closing the door after him. “Please, Lisa.” He parted herw thought she was the one in danger. “I don’t want my wife to know.”

  She looked up at him, said gently, “She does know. Oh, she hasn’t said anything, but since dinner she’s just been sitting in the drawing-room, not saying anything – she knows. I should have known, too,” she said, her voice rising, castigating herself. How much would she do for this man? Malone wondered. Then with surprise asked himself: how much am I going to do for him? Lisa turned to Malone.

  “Do you want me to take you to Fothergill’s?”

  “You’re not to go near the place!”

  “What I do in my own time is my own concern, Mr. Quentin.” Lisa’s voice was quiet; she spoke almost with love. “If I can help Mr. Malone find this Madame – Cholon? – I want to do it.”

  “I’m not going to let you risk yourself for my sake, Lisa.” He looked at Malone, spoke with authority. “Call Superintendent Denzil. He can pick up this woman.”

  Malone hesitated, then he picked up the phone. While he waited to be connected to Denzil’s office he said, “I’m going there anyway. She’s my pigeon as much as his. More in fact. She hasn’t taken a shot at him yet.” Then he spoke into the phone: “Not there? Could you give me his home number?”

  He rang Denzil at his home in Bromley. Denzil sounded relaxed, as if he had his shoes off. “What can I do you for, Sergeant? Just been watching a television programme. The Fugitive. All about an escaped murderer and a policeman who never gives up.” Malone winced; how many black boes had Denzil trodden on in Africa? “Anything wrong?”

  Malone told him. There was silence for a moment, a sigh, then: “I’ll meet you there in half an hour. No, three-quarters. I’ll have to come in my own car.”

  Malone hung up. “He’ll meet us there. I’m going now.”

  “Then you’ll need me. They won’t let you inside the door without an introduction. I’ll get my coat.” Lisa brushed past Quentin and went quickly out of the room.

  Quentin said, “I wish you’d stop her.”

  “How?” said Malone helplessly. “You should never have cultivated so much loyalty from her.”

  Quentin looked hurt, as if he had been accused of making advances to Lisa. “I didn’t go out of my way to do that.”

  “No, maybe not. But you’re stuck with it.”

  “But why are you going?” Quentin sounded cautious, even a little afraid: he did not want to be burdened with more loyalty.

  Malone sensed the hidden question and avoided it. “Put it down to the copper in me. I don’t like to see anyone get away.”

  “Either way, eh? Dead or alive?” The bitterness had at last come through; and he was ashamed of it. “Sorry, Scobie. Look after Lisa. I’ve harmed enough women.”

  Then he moved to one of the bookshelves and pulled on it; a section of the shelf of books swung out, revealing a wall safe. He opened the safe, took out some money from among the papers there, closed the safe and swung the books back into place.

  “Now you know where the papers are kept. Just as well you’re not a spy.” His smile was no more than a twitch of the muscles; humour tasted like quinine, an antidote. He held out five five-pound notes. “You may have to spend some money at Fothergill’s.”

  “There’s no need—”r />
  “Go on, take it. If you lose it, I’ll put it down to expenses. If you win—” He tried to smile again, but the effort was too much. “But our luck hasn’t been very good, has it?”

  “You’re still alive,” said Malone, and tried not to sound unkind.

  Chapter Seven

  As they closed the front door behind them Lisa said, “We’ll go in my car. It’s parked over there.”

  They moved across the pavement and a uniformed policeman detached himself from the shadows and came towards them. Malone tensed, then relaxed: he could not remember ever being as edgy as this. The policeman, burly as a wool bale and with a chin that seemed to be trying to snap his helmet strap in two, saluted them.

  “Oh, sorry, miss. Didn’t recognise you at first ’Evening, sir.”

  Malone had never been called sir before by a uniformed man: home was never like this. “Everything quiet?”

  “Quiet as a church, sir. Belgravia isn’t Chelsea.”

  “Sometimes I wish it were,” said Lisa.

  The policeman smiled; the helmet strap stretched to breaking point. “I can’t see the diplomats in Chelsea boots and long hair, miss. The Foreign Office would have a nervous breakdown.”

  The Foreign Office might have a nervous breakdown for another reason, Malone thought; and looked searchingly about the square. He and Lisa crossed the road to her car, an MG Midget with the top down. As they reached it a car came round the curve of the garden, tyres squealing, and went close by them with engine roaring. Malone pushed Lisa against the MG; then when the car had gone stood trembling. She looked up at him, then gently freed her arm from the tight vice of his hand.

  “Is it as bad as that?”

  He was looking after the car which had now disappeared! into Chesham Place. It had been an open Ε-type Jaguar and he could see the four young people who had been squashed into it waving back at him. He bit his lip, cursing himself for his nervousness, then looked down at Lisa.

  “I’m too expectant. Always waiting for the worst to happen. It’s the Celt in me.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said, but did not pursue the subject any further. She opened the door of her car and got in behind the wheel. “After riding in the Rolls all day, I like to get the wind in my face occasionally. Do you mind women drivers?”

  When he had been on the Traffic Squad he had hated them, but that was long long ago. “I love ’em.”

  “Liar,” she said, and took the car away from the kerb with a rush that jerked his head back. But she handled the car well, weaving it through the late-night traffic at Hyde Park Corner with all the skill and cheek of a taxi driver.

  “Do you want to tell me what this is all about?” she asked.

  He told her about Jamaica, Pallain and Madame Cholon, shouting to make himself heard above the rush of wind and the whine and hum of the traffic; he flung secrets on to the night air, but no one heard. Even Lisa had to lean close to him several times to catch what he said.

  There were no parking spaces in Park Lane and she turned down into the underground garage beneath the park. “We’ll leave it here. Fothergill’s is just down the street.”

  She parked the car in the vast grey cavern. They walked back past the rows of other cars, through the subway and up into Park Lane. “I don’t know whether I’m glad or not that you’ve told me all this. Ignorance is bliss sometimes.”

  The days of bliss are over, love; there’s worse yet to come. “Do you want to go back home?”

  “No. Once I start something I like to finish it. That’s the Dutch in me.” She looked up at him and smiled. “We’re friends now?”

  “Mates,” he said.

  They came to a halt in front of a four-storied house with a patrician front and a doorman who had been chopped whole out of some quarry. A veneer of public school accent had been laid over the gravel in his voice, but Malone guessed he would be a fluent linguist in all the four-letter words.

  He opened the heavy front door with its coat of arms and wished them luck. “Thanks,” said Malone, and wondered if Madame Cholon was already inside.

  He had thought the house in Belgrave Square was luxurious enough, but this made the High Commissioner’s home look like a council house. “It belonged to a duke,” said Lisa, noticing his roving eye. “One of the more hedonistic ones. He recognised the end of an era when he saw one, so he committed suicide. Shot himself with a silver pistol.”

  “I could have been a hedonist. But I got too set in my ways before I found out what the word meant”

  “Would your old Irish mum go for this?”

  Malone grinned at her and looked up at the huge crimson tapestry that hung on a panelled wall: hounds tore a stag to pieces while their master, still in his riding boots, made love to his mistress in the background. “As soon as she saw that she’d start hoeing the place down with holy water.”

  The manager of the club squeezed himself out of a tiny office under the stairs. Everything in this mansion was designed for the comfort of the guests; the club management had the old duke’s ideas about the proper place for staff. Lisa introduced Malone, and the manager, another man with an accent that didn’t belong to him, discreetly looked Malone up and down. His eyes rested for a moment on the old brown shoes with the dark blue suit, and Malone did his best to look like an eccentric millionaire.

  “Mr. Malone is just over from Australia,” said Lisa, recognising the doubt in the manager’s face. “He’s here to buy cattle. And to enjoy himself. He lives a very lonely life on his cattle station. How big is it, Mr. Malone?”

  “Just a manageable size. Three million acres. I sold off most of it last year.” He looked at the manager. “Labour shortage. You probably have the same trouble.”

  “It’s the same all over, sir,” said the manager, leading them up the curving flight of stairs now. “I’ve often thought of going to Australia. Must be full of opportunities.” His black eyes sparkled; he could see himself peeling money like bark off the suckers Down Under. “I understand Australians are great gamblers, but they don’t have the right facilities.”

  Malone thought of the two-up schools in the clearing in French’s Forest, in the various warehouses around Surry Hills. “The law’s a bit old-fashioned,” he said, and was glad he wouldn’t be quoted to the Commissioner.

  “The law is always behind the times.” The manager handed out smiles like gambling chips to other guests as he led them into the main room on the first floor. “But at Last our government has seen the light here.”

  He wished them luck, left them and Lisa said, “And row everyone can choose his own road to hell.”

  Malone looked at her in surprise. “I thought you were in favour of gambling?”

  “Only in moderation. My socially conscious hackles stand on end when I see some of the money lost here. My oil sheik, for instance, lost eight thousand pounds the night I came here with him.”

  Malone patted the twenty-five pounds in his wallet, wondering how many minutes they would buy him at the tables. He looked around the room. It was still too early for the serious gamblers and only a few players were at the tables. An aristocratic crone, face held together by make-up, her skeleton hidden in black lace, carefully placed chips as if they were the last moments of her life. Across from her a young boy, smooth, elegant and as expressionless as a store dummy, tossed chips on to the squares with the careless profligacy of someone with wealth and years to burn. No one seemed to be enjoying themselves; or if they were, they kept their enjoyment well disguised. The room was inhabited by clockwork corpses.

  Lisa was also looking around. “Do you see your Madame Cholon?”

  “She’s not here yet,” said Jamaica behind them, and Malone and Lisa turned round. He looked expressionlessly at Lisa and said, “You’re Miss Pretorious, aren’t you?”

  “How did you know?”

  “He seems to know everything,” said Malone.

  Jamaica smiled. “Not everything, Mr. Malone. It would make my job so much
easier if I did.”

  “What is your job? You’re not at the Embassy.”

  “Who said I was? You’ve been jumping to conclusions. You’re too athletic in your prejudices, Malone.”

  Malone swallowed, keeping his temper in check. “What do you do, then?”

  “I export Thai silk. From Bangkok. A harmless business, but profitable.”

  “Who do you sell to – diplomats? I didn’t think blokes in the rag trade hung around embassies and international conferences.”

  “The rag trade?” Jamaica shook his head sadly. “Thai silk isn’t rag.”

  “Mr. Malone is no fashion expert,” said Lisa truthfully. “But if you were at Lancaster House this morning, it does seem an odd place for you to be. I mean, you wouldn’t expect Hardy Amies or Mary Quant to hang about the United Nations in New York.”

  “What is your place in this set-up, Miss Pretorious?”

  Lisa blinked when puzzled, a little girl’s blink: for a moment it destroyed the poised woman-of-the-world image that was her usual face. “Which set-up is that, Mr. Jamaica?”

  They were both too polite for Malone’s liking; impatiently he said, “What’s your place, Jamaica. That’s more to the point.”

  The players and the croupiers at the tables were staring at them with the discreet but fixed looks of thoroughbred vultures: gaming clubs were not for gossiping. Jamaica said, “We’re making ourselves conspicuous. What are you going to play? Baccarat, roulette, chemin de fer?”

  “I’ll take roulette,” said Malone, acutely aware that he would be playing with someone else’s money. “I’ve got no memory for cards.”

  Jamaica led the way into a side room where the fat hornrimmed cashier sat like a giant panda behind his cage. “You’re not a gambler?”

  “No.”

  “Madame Cholon seemed disappointed in you. I think she really wanted you to bring her here last night.”

  “Did you bring her?”

  Jamaica nodded. “Had a very disappointing night. How much do you want to change?”

  Malone took out the five five-pound notes. The cashier looked pained and slid across five chips. “Is that all?” Malone said.