“Don’t mind if I join you, do you,” he said, sitting on the settee beside me. I saw then he was carrying a small leather attaché-case, which he put carefully down on the floor between our respective legs. “Nice to have a chat away from the other blokes at work, eh?”
“I suppose it makes a change.”
“Sure does. What’s your line … if you don’t mind me asking?”
I shrugged. “Of course I don’t mind. I’m in insurance.” In a sense, I was — depending on what you were insuring against! Anyway, that was my usual cover and my fully comprehensive training in 6D2 had included enough insurance background to get away with it. “And you?”
“Oh, this and that, you know, this and that,” the fat man answered, making a rocking motion with his left hand. “You know how it is … a deal here, a deal there, anything that comes along and can show a profit. It’s varied and it’s interesting.”
“Yes, it must be,” I agreed and asked unkindly, “What about the other blokes at work?”
He blinked. “Eh?”
“You said it was nice to have a chat away from the other blokes at work … but I’d have thought a man who made deals here and deals there tended to work solo. In the main.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, I get you. You’re right, too. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of it from your point of view. That’s all.”
“Kind of you,” I said. He nodded, and went on talking. While he talked, I studied him. He was in no way unusual; there were plenty of that sort, who tagged on to another loner in a bar. Sheer loneliness was their trouble mainly, or sometimes a desire to impress. And sometimes too a desire to make a deal — with fraudulent intent. Chat a man up. I knew I looked well-paid; I was well-paid, and I dressed up to my salary. I had a solid gold cigarette case and the fat man had seen it; my wallet, had, I believe, around fifteen fivers in it and he could have seen that. But in point of fact my suspicions didn’t run in quite that direction, because the fat man was wearing a double-breasted jacket, which not so many men do these days. They are somewhat out of fashion but they are the best things to wear if you happen to be wearing a gun in a shoulder holster as well, and there was something about the set of that double-breasted jacket that said the fat man was armed. You don’t normally conduct the early stages of small-time fraud with a gun; a smooth tongue serves you better. The fat man’s tongue wasn’t especially smooth, not in that sense: he was a lousy conversationalist, full of banalities and all those damn giggles. Besides which, he could have tailed me from Focal House. True, I hadn’t been in the least aware of any tail, but then we don’t normally bother to watch out for that sort of thing unless we’re going direct from HQ to somewhere that matters. Which, of course, I hadn’t been on this occasion. So if he had tailed me … just then, I happened to move my right leg and knocked against the leather attaché-case so that it fell over.
The fat man pounced on it. “Careful, for Christ’s sake!” he snapped, and for a moment I saw murder in his eyes. Then he recovered his bounce. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that it’s got some breakables in it. I should have said.”
“One of the deals, here and there?”
He nodded. “That’s right, yes.”
“It’s for me to apologize, then,” I said gallantly. “Why not open up and see if everything’s okay?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Not to worry, not to worry.”
“But I’d like to pay for —”
“Course not!” he said promptly. “Just an accident — I wouldn’t dream of asking you to pay.”
“But I really must —”
“No!” he said, with violence, and loudly. He had gone quite red in the face. The room had filled up; a white-jacketed waiter was taking luncheon orders. Faces turned towards us and eyebrows were raised. A brawl had been scented, and brawls didn’t happen in the Prospect of Whitby. The fat man simmered down, but he was badly on edge, though he did his best to turn the heat off that case, and turn my interest off it at the same time. Well, I obliged; and when the waiter approached I ordered my lunch and the fat man ordered his. Nothing was said on either side as to whether we were going to share a table, but I knew very well that in fact I was due for a spoiled meal. We each had another large whisky while we waited for the food to be cooked, and the fat man went on talking, and I went on thinking about that leather case, because something, something vague, had come into my mind to do with a big-time murder hunt a few years back, a crime in which an innocent-looking leather attaché-case had become involved, I wasn’t quite sure how. It was just a memory stirring somewhere deep.
Then, suddenly as these things do, it clicked. It clicked big and I didn’t like it. And just as it did that, the waiter came along to say our lunch was ready and would we please go into the dining-room. I nodded. The fat man rubbed his hands and said, “Won’t mind if I join you, will you, eh?”
“By all means, do,” I said.
We stood up. The fat man grabbed the case, which was evidently to accompany us to the table. “After you, chum,” he said. So I led the way across the room with its river view, and back through the bar, across the top of the staircase and into the dining-room. When we were ushered to our table, the leather case was pushed beneath it, alongside the fat man’s short fat legs, and soup was brought. My table-mate chatted away right through the soup and the porterhouse steak and the cheese — a first-class Stilton in really prime condition — and then, while I was drinking black coffee, I saw his right hand go down and I heard a faint scrape on the floor. So far as I was concerned, the crunch had come. I meant to take a risk on starting an unseemly rough-house and another, and I guessed smaller, risk of smashing some genuinely valuable property into tiny fragments. I moved my left foot back fast, and pressed the sole of my shoe on the side of the moving attaché-case, and then lunged hard. The case shot out of the fat man’s grip, zoomed out from under the tablecloth, banged its way across the dining-room, and fetched up against the opposite wall. The waiting staff were quite stunned, so were the other diners. But not the fat man. I’ll say this for him — he was fast. The moment he felt that case go out of control, he had jumped up and rammed the table hard against me, so that for a fraction of time — long enough — I was pinned against the wall with my feet all tangled up in a chair-and table-legs. While I disentangled, he went. He was out of the dining-room and down the stairs in a flash, and no-one even tried to stop him until it was too late. They told us later, the people in the downstairs bar, that he’d run like a hare for the door and they’d heard a car start up and zoom off, and that was that. When they got to the door, he’d already vanished. So I was left with no registration number and no car description. Just the attaché-case, which by this time was covered with at least half a dozen sets of prints. It was locked, and it rattled when shaken, but not much — not enough to indicate fragmented priceless porcelain figures or anything of that sort. I talked in private with the manager and was allowed to depart with the case. I took it to Focal House, by a very devious route this time, though I could identify no tail — and I was dead watchful now — and I had it carefully opened up in the fingerprint section. Inside was a very strong spring, and this spring was attached to the plunger of a hypodermic, now broken. Immediately and precisely opposite where the needle would plunge when the spring was activated was a very, very tiny hole in the leather. Through another hole beneath the handle, a string protruded. When this string was pulled, the spring would be released, and the needle would be driven through the hole. Thence into my leg, presumably, or any other handy part of the body. It was dead neat; no-one would ever suspect an attaché-case of biting and it could be pressed against anyone in a crowd. When the broken hypo, which still retained a little of a clear liquid, was sent to the medical section, they diagnosed a new drug called flexidotone which, when injected into any part of the body, not just a vein or muscle, caused fainting. So the idea had been to anaesthetize me, after which the fat man, asserting lifelong friendship, would have had me carried to his c
ar as being the fastest means of getting sick me to hospital.
It was intriguing to wonder where I would have landed up …
In the meantime the fingerprint boys had been busy and a check had been put on; but the files told us nothing at all. Not only had the fat man no record, but neither had any of the diners who had handled the attaché-case, which might have been pleasing to the management of the Prospect of Whitby but left me cold. All I could do was to type out a full report for Max — he was currently lunching at the Home Office, prior to attending an afternoon meeting there — and get back in the Jag and go home and think. What I thought about principally was why the fat man had wanted to get hold of me. Was there a connection with Nada Strecka and Drakotny, or was this something else, some hangover from the past or even, maybe, a foretaste of some other bombshell that was about to burst on Focal House?
I could find no answers to that and after a while I got tired of being nagged at by my brain and made a conscious effort to forget it for the time being. I knew I hadn’t seen the last of the fat man, whatever his reasons might be, and when he showed up again he wasn’t going to get away with it a second time. I would deal with him. It so happened that I had a date early that evening with an old friend in Guildford, and in due course, leaving my car in the garage since I knew I was in for a late and alcoholic night and I didn’t want to risk my licence, I caught a train from Waterloo.
*
I didn’t get up very early next morning; I just didn’t feel like it, though it was a wonderful day, crisp and cold but sunny, with a blue sky and white clouds streaking across before a fresh breeze. About noon I felt better and, after shoving my head in a basin of cold water, was fit enough for anything, including Nada Strecka. I went out straight away when the man from 6D2 reported as promised by Max. The man was Harry Foster and I knew him well. He was ex-RN, a former Chief Petty Officer, Chief Bosun’s Mate in a guided-weapons cruiser for his last job in the Service, a real sailor, one of the old salt-horse breed, one hundred per cent reliable and totally unflappable. In the Navy he’d been a Devonport rating in his early years, and still had roots down that way, which no doubt was why Max had allocated him to me.
I asked, “You’ve got the route in your head, have you, Foster?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes, sir. I never did need a road map, not down that way.”
“Good. Had your lunch?”
“I have, sir.”
“Well, I’m afraid you’re due for another, because I haven’t. And we’re lunching out at the airport. I want to have a discreet look at the customers before that jet gets in — just on the chance of picking something up. All right?”
“Whatever you say, sir.” We went down to my garage and Foster asked, “Want me to drive, sir?”
“May as well,” I said. “Get the feel of her in case I need a spell on the way down.” So Harry Foster drove and I sat back and watched out for a tail. In the airport itself I was looking out for the fat man, principally. If his approach to me had had anything to do with Miss Strecka’s arrival, then for a certainty he would be around this afternoon. But I didn’t get a glimpse of him, either in the approaches or in the airport buildings or during lunch. Still, there was time yet. Foster and I lingered over coffee, and I was all eyes, but there was still no sign of fatty … and then the tannoy, which had been blaring away fairly consistently throughout, announced the imminent arrival of the jumbo jet from Kennedy.
I said, “That’s us. Pay the bill, Harry, then find me in the spectators’ gallery.”
I went out into the open air, and joined the spectators. A matter of minutes later I saw the monstrous thing from America coming in to land, saw it touch down, and then taxi to the disembarkation bay. As the gangway was wheeled out and secured in position, Harry Foster fell in beside me and we both watched while the baggage bays were opened and then the passengers started coming out onto the gangway. It was a never-ending stream, all sorts of people, businessmen and their wives and/or secretaries, stout matrons, stringy old daddies, some kids, some startling-looking teenagers, sort of near-hippies. After around two hundred of these people had surged out, I saw Nada Strecka. She was unmistakably the girl in that film — the figure was there, and the air, and the bone structure, though the face was white and ill. She seemed to have some difficulty in negotiating the steeply-inclined steps of the gangway; she clung tight to the rail, and went slowly, and caused a bit of a bottle-neck, and I saw people urging her to hurry. Several of them pushed past her, flattening her against the side. I thought she was scared, and I felt sorry for her, and wanted to help. I fancied she must have found all the jet’s toilets engaged when she went for a fix. When she disappeared from view I laid a hand on Harry Foster’s shoulder. “Let’s go,” I said. “We wait by the exit from customs and immigration. Or I do. You get back to the Jag, Harry, and be ready for a fast start. You may have a long wait. By the look of that girl’s face, I’d say she’s a likely candidate for a comprehensive drugs search.”
Harry Foster went off and I went along to immigration and hung around the door through which already the passengers were streaming. There was a fair amount of milling around going on as the passengers were met and I saw no sign of the fat man. Maybe there just was not any link with Miss Strecka. Anyway, I kept myself as unobtrusive as possible and watched the exit door like a hawk. Soon, much sooner than I had expected, I saw Miss Strecka, or Miss Moore as her current passport would presumably proclaim, coming through uncertainly into the throng of passengers and relatives and uniformed airline employees.
I went straight for her, pushing through the crowd.
“Miss Rosalie Moore?” I asked.
“Why, yes. Who’re you? I don’t know you, do I?”
I said, “No, but you’re coming with me.” I put a hand on her arm; she didn’t try to shake it off, but she was trembling like a leaf in the breeze and her face was a haggard mask, with eyes like holes in the snow. She was carrying a couple of grips and I asked if this was the sum total of her baggage, and she said it was. That could be why she’d got through so quickly despite her appearance, or on the other hand it could have been that Max had fixed things in advance and ensured her an easy passage, a fast delivery into my hands. I said, “Let me take one of these, Miss Moore,” and I took the handle of one of the grips with my free hand.
She held on tight and said in a rather high voice, “Please tell me what all this means?”
I shook my head. “Not right now. All I can tell you is, I’m here for your own protection. I have a car waiting. I’d advise you to come along just as fast as you can.”
“But —”
“Please, Miss Moore. I assure you, there’s danger in delay.”
I don’t believe she had the strength to argue any further; she was clearly sick, in mind and body too, and her face was green. She was trying not to go entirely to pieces but her whole body was shaking now, and she was forced to lean on me for support. She was thankful enough to hand over both those grips, and after that I simply shepherded her out of the airport building and over to the Jag where Harry Foster was sitting behind the wheel. He got out when he saw me, and held the front near-side door open for the girl, and, looking utterly dazed, she got in. Harry took the cases and shoved them in the back, then got in after them himself. I was already in and I started up before Harry had the rear door shut.
“Harry,” I said, “watch out for tails and don’t miss a thing. I want to know the moment you identify anything.” I glanced sideways at Nada Strecka’s face as I took the Jag out from the airport area, under the tunnel, heading for the M4. I did not intend to stick to the motorway for long enough to make a tail’s job easy, but it offered me a good, fast start. Miss Strecka’s face was sort of wobbling, I saw, and she was crying. I said, “There’s no need for that, you know. You won’t believe this, probably, but you’re in good hands. We’re not going to hurt you.” Then I asked abruptly, “Do you need a shot? Is that it?”
“Yes,” she said, and l
et out a long, sighing breath. Then she gave me a sharp look. “How did you know?”
“Never mind that for now. But you could have said. We’re not the police.”
“How do I know that?” The voice was still high, and hoarse too.
“You’ll have to take it on trust for now. I take it you have a supply?”
She nodded, dumbly.
“Did the customs go through your things?”
“No,” she said, and then I knew I’d guessed right and Max must have fixed it.
“Harry,” I said, “give her a hand, will you? Let my friend have your keys, Miss Moore, then you can fix yourself up.”
She nodded and fumbled in her handbag and found the keys and passed them back to Harry. She said, “In the larger case … there’s a toilet set. Red leather, with a zip.” I watched my mirrors while Harry delved into the grip. I couldn’t see anything that had as yet developed into a tail. Behind me I had a dark green Cortina, then a Mini, and after that a petrol-tanker blocked out the view. After a while I heard the girl say, “Yes, thats it — thank you. Would you hand me the tin of dusting powder, please?” Her English was as good as Max had said it was: faultless, with absolutely no accent at all. I glanced sideways again as she took the tin of talcum powder in shaking fingers. That tin held powder all right, but the powder was confined to a central core. When she twisted the top, using a clockwise motion to unscrew it, this core came away and she put a finger into the body of the tin and brought out a tiny hypodermic, and an ampoule, wrapped in layers of cotton-wool. She fixed herself up quickly, thrusting the needle with practised precision into her wrist. She sat for a moment with her eyes closed, then reassembled the tin and handed it back to Harry. By this time we had already reached the M4 and I was going along in the fast lane at a steady seventy, thinking to myself that this was my first experience of seeing a fix given on a motorway. The shot did her a lot of good, and the shaking stopped and the voice settled down to a lower, and very attractive, key. She said, “Thank you so much, both of you, for allowing that. I’d nearly reached my limit, and I didn’t dare say.”
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