The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

  They had been late down for breakfast; and now as she walked behind him the tears in her eyes from the wind were joined by fresh tears from herself. Such joy as she now had, nothing could take it from her. Maxie had said it; whatever happened they both had all the richness which they could ever ask for.

  They dropped down to the crescent-shaped beach and arms linked, bowed their heads into the wind and began to walk across it to the path that led up to the farmhouse.

  That evening after eating they sat by the fire, she on a cushion at his feet, and decided that there was no desire in them to move from this place they had found. They would go when their mood changed.

  In Quint’s hotel bedroom, the two of them were having a drink before going down to dinner. A little earlier Kerslake had left them after bringing them back from Lopcommon Barton. Three times during the day Kerslake had telephoned the police headquarters to see whether there had been any report on Mrs Tucker’s car. There had been none. He had left, promising to let them know the moment any positive report came in.

  Lassiter, fingering his glass, was now nursing the feeling that they were going to get nowhere without Margaret Tucker. Whether Quint felt the same he did not ask. In an hour Quint was due to telephone a report through for Warboys. Quint did not like making nil returns. Even the small crumb of a result to pass on would have lifted the withdrawn mood which Lassiter knew claimed him. To have found her car, to be able to tell Warboys where she was would have helped – would, Lassiter guessed, be his hope right up to the time of telephoning Warboys.

  Lassiter got up and helped himself to another drink. An enquiring look towards Quint brought only a shake of the head.

  Lassiter said into the blue, ‘Ankers talks of her shoplifting. It’s in her diary. You read it. An almost clinical description and her own diagnosis. Frustration, change of life perhaps, boredom, no real purpose in anything she was doing. An unused woman, whose mind and body take control and force a new character and role on her when she least expects it. This bore you?’

  Quint looked at and beyond him.

  ‘It could,’ he said.

  ‘It shouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because – don’t ask me for any logic behind it – she’s the key to all this. Just a feeling I have which you probably don’t share. But I was taught not to ignore any hunch that persists. A few moments ago I was not going to mention it to you. But you’re such a picture of gloom I thought you needed cheering up.’

  Despite himself Quint smiled. When you worked together protocol lapsed. Lassiter had no real time for him, he knew. But Lassiter wanted results just as he did. On an impulse he held out his empty glass and Lassiter came over and took it to recharge.

  Quint said, ‘Let’s have it – and make it stick.’

  Lassiter gave him back his glass and sat on the bed. He toasted him and then said, ‘Right. There’s nothing about security that Bernard didn’t know – and when necessary practise. He comes back home with a bunch of important papers. So far as we know – and I’ll bet against it – there’s no outside opposition. Nobody else after them. Right?’

  ‘We’d have picked up some sign if there were.’

  ‘But Bernard would have taken just the same precautions as if there had been. He never let up. He works on his report on the Sunday, finishes it and tidies it all away. Mailing it off to some address we’ve disposed of. Even when we covered it we knew that it was something he would never have done. Not the Commander. He was going to stick with the stuff until he landed it on Warboys’ desk. He hid the stuff in that house.’

  ‘We’ve gone through that, and we shall go through it again tomorrow. But you know as well as I do that to be absolutely certain we should have to take it all apart, brick by brick and beam by beam. We can’t do that.’

  ‘Neither could Bernard. It’s somewhere handy enough to be hidden, or taken out in a few moments.’

  ‘Where the hell does Mrs Tucker come into this?’

  Lassiter smiled. ‘We’re going to accept that he put the stuff, in the house or surroundings somewhere?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then Mrs Tucker comes into it because the man she knew was a different man from the one we knew. Vastly. For Christ’s sake we didn’t even know he was married, wanted to be rid of her, and had this place down here. Warboys is mourning him right now – but he’ll never forgive him for it, for making a fool of him and his beloved Department.’

  ‘Stick to the different man Mrs Tucker knew.’

  ‘Gladly. Tucker hid the stuff that Sunday. The fact that he died a few hours later is unimportant. He could still have put it where he did because the idea of his own death would never have entered his mind. Now, where did Mrs Tucker’s husband hide the stuff?’

  ‘We’re back at the same point.’

  ‘No. It’s my bet that there’s something she knows about Tucker – and we don’t – which will lead us to the stuff. It could be something very simple, meaning nothing to her, but everything to us. How does that seem to you?’

  ‘Reasonable.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But we can’t bloody well talk to the woman until we find her.’

  ‘Don’t worry. She’ll surface.’

  ‘But when? Warboys is being pressed from above.’

  ‘Then keep your fingers crossed that the police locate her soon or she turns up of her own accord. They could put out a call on the radio or television for her, but I don’t imagine that would be popular. The name Tucker might ring like an alarm bell, not only to Sir Harry Parks, but to some of his old friends.’

  ‘How the hell did you know about Sir Harry Parks?’

  Lassiter smiled. ‘Bernard didn’t tidy his office desk because he thought he was going back to it. I’ve used it these last days. There’s a recently issued, de-restricted biography file of Sir Harry still in it. And to make my first point again – that’s just the kind of break we ought to pray for from Mrs Tucker. Something that not even Bernard could have anticipated would break his security.’

  Billy Ankers sat in his room, toasting his feet in front of the gas fire in the grate. On the far side of the room a small electric fire stood close to his bed. The warmth in the small room was tropical. He felt relaxed and pleased with himself. Nancy would be with him in an hour. At least, he hoped she would be. It had been a long time. If any small boy came clumping up the stairs with excuse notes from her he really felt that he would have to make the effort of finding himself a more reliable companion. It was an idle thought. He knew it would never happen. Nancy knew and understood him. To break someone else in would be too much like hard work. Good old Nance, she knew when to shut her eyes or her mouth. And so she should, seeing the kind of father she’d had. He hadn’t been above or below making a quick turn in his time and he’d done his little bit of porridge now and then at Exeter and Taunton jails. Nice old codger – he’d picked up quite a few tricks from him. But not this, one, not this touch of mischief which was more than half-formed in his mind. Against that the few quid which Mr Tucker had died owing him was nothing. If this came off he wouldn’t even bother to claim that through the solicitors. Not bloody likely. That would be asking for it.

  He relit his pipe and stared at the mantelshelf, his lips working like, a bored goldfish blowing bubbles. But he was far from bored. Got to handle it dead right, he told himself. Different paper, different typewriter. Don’t post it in the town. Where? Bristol would do. And really make it clear that it was a once and for all touch. No coming back again for more. Not with this kind of thing. Greediness could be dangerous – particularly with a woman like Mrs Tucker. She would frighten easily, but if you frightened her too much you might touch-off something you couldn’t handle. Let’s face it, for all he knew she could well have pushed the old boy over. And, if she’d done it once, she might do it again with someone else … to yours truly, particularly if she happened to be in one of her shop-lifting moods.

  Wonder where she was now w
ith that Maxie? Cuddling up in some little love-nest. The whole town knew that they had gone off together … nice, juicy scandal. But they would be back. When they were he’d give her a few days to settle down and then do his stuff. In the meantime he had the letter to make up. Have to pitch that just right. And the amount to decide. Five hundred? Hardly enough if he wasn’t going to come back for more, and he wasn’t. A thousand? About right, and she’d never miss it.

  He pushed his chair back a fraction to ease the heat on his soles and forgot about the letter he would have to write as he contemplated what he could do with a thousand pounds.

  Walking home down Allpart Street, Kerslake saw the light shining through the fanlight at the top of the, door next to the baker’s shop. He could hear Quint saying, ‘ Now tell us about William Ankers.’ And he had told him. And then Quint had dropped it and gone on to Andrew Browning. Since then, not another word about Billy Ankers. Not that that puzzled him. He’d lay any money that Commander Tucker had employed Billy to keep an eye on his wife’s doings. That was clear enough. Billy had probably sent a report on Maxie Dougall. He could guess how that would have been pitched – strong enough to fortify Tucker’s angry opposition to the man. But why had Tucker wanted to have his wife watched? That was more intriguing than why he had picked a scruff like Billy Ankers to do it. Billy, he guessed, had been picked because he was the only man on the spot. If Billy had ever tried any nonsense and that was something that the fool could never resist eventually – then Commander Tucker, seeing now who and what he was, could have frightened the living daylights out of him, and more. He smiled at the thought. And then the smile went. For God’s sake, what were they up to? ‘Now tell us about William Ankers,’ and then no more. Why hadn’t they been to see him? Well … it was none of his business to ask them questions. Show yourself too eager, too bright (when all the bloody time you could be being stupid) and they wrote you off. And that he did not want because who knew, he was young and there was all his future ahead of him.

  He turned into the garden of his lodging house. As he opened the front door the smell of cooking drifted down the hall from the back kitchen. A bed-sitting room and meals in common with the other lodgers. What he wanted was the key of a London flat, no girl in particular, and to be able to face someone with that hard, level stare of Quint’s.

  They spent another two days going over Lopcommon Barton without result. The search for Mrs Tucker’s car or her whereabouts had produced nothing.

  Quint sat in Warboys’ office now, listening to what he knew was the cold preamble to an ultimatum. For a moment or two he had a quick picture in his mind of Lassiter, propping up the bar in the Empress Hotel, and envied him. To Lassiter success or failure meant only minor elation or superficial wounds. For himself he knew that he would be marked for the rest of his professional life by the result he could produce on this case. If he gave Warboys what he wanted, and what those beyond wanted, then the road ahead was clear. Should he fail through no fault of his own, he would have no defence because failure itself was an absolute that precluded all generosity and all excuses. You won or you lost here. There were no second or third places. He realized that he – who had always wanted Bernard’s place – was fighting Bernard himself for it now. No outside forces, no opposition, just Bernard and the unseen, unmeasurable motions of chance and circumstances. For all he knew – and his own iron-controlled anxiety produced the fancy oddly in his mind – he could be on the point of seeing his professional ambitions harried and crippled because at some time in the past the wind had blown the last dead leaf from a tree or the mind of some man had given unexpected occupancy to a moment of nostalgia which had changed briefly his purpose and direction. That Warboys, with his own higher degree of power and cold dream of honours, would suffer with him was no consolation.

  Warboys said evenly, ‘The position is absolutely clear. It is as near a certainty as makes no difference that there will be an election early in the New Year. And this time – and not before time – the lines of battle will be drawn up so that there will only be one choice before the electorate. Is a democratic government going to control this country or is the future of the country going to be in the hands of the trades unions and, their ability to impose their will by industrial power? Forget all the nonsense of who controls the trades unions. It is the power of the State against the power of organized labour. Either government by law, or the rule of force by workers’ organizations led by militants whose real purpose is plain anarchy – no matter what fancy political name they choose to give to it.’ Warboys paused fractionally. He had been tempted to say – as he often had done with Bernard, ‘How am I sounding?’ and he remembered, too, Bernard’s reply the last time. ‘Like a TV political pundit. But you’re warming up, Percy.’ Conscious of the sharp bite of memory, he went on, ‘But let’s waste no more time on that. Politics stink. Sadly – this time – we are over-involved and can’t withdraw. Those papers are wanted. Whether or not they would ever be used is not our concern. Any of a dozen twists of expediency or electoral opinion poll ratings could keep them locked away, unused. Safe in the ammunition locker, maybe for another time. But the point is the ammunition locker is empty … until we get the papers. If we don’t get them ever, or in time for them to be used if that decision is made – then you know the score, Quint. There will be a certain brightness withdrawn from your future for ever – and from mine.’ He let the words sink in, and then smiled sympathetically. ‘We’ve produced miracles in the past. Nothing less is expected of us now. Damp squibs are not wanted. So what do you say to that?’

  Quint said, ‘When we find Mrs Tucker I shall find what they want.’

  ‘What does Lassiter think?’

  ‘The same, sir.’

  ‘What do you think has happened to her?’

  ‘She’s holed up somewhere – not deliberately – in some place with this man Dougall. They’re freshly in love. They’re not flashy types who’d go for a big or plushy hotel. They’re somewhere on their own. Not in a town, I doubt. Some cottage or farmhouse with the car seldom used. The numbers of wanted cars the police have to look out for are in hundreds, and there are plenty of men in the force who say “Oh, to hell with it” – unless the car parks right under their nose. She’s not abroad. Her passport’s still in the house. And he has never been issued with one. Put out a call on TV or radio and they’d be turned up tomorrow.’

  Warboys shook his head. ‘That’s out. You know why.’

  ‘Out for good, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Within five minutes the press would be crawling all over the place. There are good men in the press. They soon read the score. Five minutes with her or this Dougall! Can you imagine! Five minutes in that town and the name Commander Tucker a gift for them. No, it’s out for good. That’s been categorically stated. But I’m not worried. She’ll come back in her own time, or be spotted. When she does … well, it’s up to you.’ He was silent for a moment or two, poised to dismiss Quint, a man he had begun to create – just as he had created Bernard but had overlooked, because of an affection never allowed to transgress its proper bounds, the basic un-suitability of his material. Bernard had cheated him, but the original sin he knew had rested in him. Sublimating a love yet keeping the object of that love near you by guile was, he could now confess to himself, a dishonour greater than reaching openly for that love and risking utter rejection … and that he knew was what he would have had. He went on, ‘ The autopsy was positive that Bernard lived for some time after the fall?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Ten or fifteen minutes.’ And knowing what was coming, Quint added, ‘ I’ve spoken to the surgeon. He had little doubt that Commander Tucker would have been fully conscious for quite a while. Which means that the Commander would almost certainly have used his watch and recorded where he had put the papers unless—’ He broke off sharply. The last word had slipped from him before he could halt it.

  ‘Yes? Unless what?’

  Without hesitating Quint, saving himself as far a
s he could, said, ‘Unless he had a good reason for not doing so.’

  Warboys, acknowledging to himself that Quint was growing up fast, that he would be a good man soon and, maybe, a far better one than Bernard had proved to be, said casually, ‘I shouldn’t rely too much on the watch.’

  Quint said, ‘Mrs Tucker will know where the watch is. She could have given it to Dougall, or have it with her, planning to do so.’

  ‘Her dead husband’s watch to her lover?’

  ‘I gather she is a strange woman in some ways. This shop-lifting business and a certain quiet disregard of conventions.’

  Warboys nodded, dismissing Quint. When he was gone – already under instructions to rejoin Lassiter at the Empress Hotel – Warboys went to his cupboard and poured himself a drink. For a moment or two he had been tempted there and then to give orders that when the watch was found he wanted it brought to him before the tape was played. God knows what Bernard might have said. The prospect of death could concentrate a man’s mind in a strange direction. He had no wish for anyone else to hear any last moment message to him from Bernard, some cruel, even though true, valediction. Then he dismissed the thought, ashamed of himself. Bernard was not the kind of man to take advantage of his dying moments to wound other people.

  Chapter Twelve

  As they came down off the moor to the wooded river valley Margaret, who was driving, turned off the main road into a side lane.

  Maxie asked, ‘Where are you going? This isn’t the way back.’

  Margaret smiled. ‘It is the way. Another way home. You’ll see.’

  She drove carefully down the narrow country road to the valley bottom and stopped the car on the old stone bridge that crossed the river. Sunlight struck through a border of pines across the low, white-faced, thatched house, and over the grey slates of the stone-built barn at its side. The lawn sloped down to the river which was dropping fast in height now after the recent rains. A few early snowdrops flaked the river bank.