Death Order

by Jan Needle

  When the train pulled into Euston, Bill Wiley was fully asleep. In true British fashion nobody woke him, probably because he looked so disreputable, and he opened his eyes to those of a startled black woman with a plastic bag and duster, who hoped he was not drunk. Bill smiled at her and dragged himself upright, but she pursed her lips at him, making a sucking noise. Apart from a crush at the exit barrier, the platform was almost empty.

  First, clothes. He emerged from Euston Station into a muggy London day, and turned back on himself to the King’s Cross hinterland. On a whim, to wash the whisky staleness from his mouth, he went into a big Victorian pub and took a half of Guinness. The barman and all the customers he could hear were Irish, which amused Bill. The warm weight of the nine-millimetre Browning was intrusive and significant, although he doubted if many of the people in this pub would have recognized it. They looked like south and western men, across the water for an age, labourers perhaps, or dossers. In an English pub, a London Irish house, he was invisible.

  The drink done, Bill wandered further into King’s Cross and found a good, cheap clothes shop. He bought a pair of dark trousers, lightweight and anonymous, some socks and pants, two quiet shirts. Two doors away he got a pair of leather shoes, and further on a light wool jumper. The bomber jacket, assessed in a shop mirror, looked all right. Standard and respectable for the time of year, for summer ’87. And it had the special stitching, fabric reinforced, for the automatic. He bought a small, light nylon bag to put the clothes in, a pack of razors and some shaving foam, a toothbrush, toothpaste, underarm deodorant, soap and flannel. Then he returned to Euston Station, washed and shaved and cleaned his teeth, and went into a cubicle to change. He tried a shit, but the whisky had bound his bowels, so he gave that up after five minutes. His old clothes he left neatly on the floor. London, he noted, was full of dossers these days, it reeked of poverty. Someone might find them and consider it a stroke of luck, you never knew. He took the Victoria Line to Green Park, ten minutes and another world. No dossers visible among the tourists and the wealthy. The few cars in the plate-glass showroom window behind which Colin worked were worth a million.

  Colin spotted him as he came through the open glass doors, and made his pleasure clear. He bustled across, much older than his years, beaming. Bill’s response was more ambivalent. He was the same age as Colin, but he was much younger, the same background and education, but of a different planet. It came to him that he was beginning to be an oddity, who lived outside normal life. The gun beside his chest, which for years had been a part of him, had started to intrude, like the roots of a carbuncle growing in. He was aware of it.

  They went for a quick drink and a sandwich, up New Bond Street, a surprisingly noisy and insalubrious pub. Colin was effusive, Bill guarded, and the racket from the juke box and the lunchtime office crush made a useful barrier to conversation. Colin was not the sort to ask too many questions, preferring to tell Bill the technical details of the BMW he had got for him, so the time passed painlessly. He was given Jane Heywood’s address, a street map of Oxford – you think of everything, Col, you’re a mate – and a hand-drawn map of Old Windsor and Colin’s flat, in case he had forgotten how to get there. The BMW was parked behind the showroom, and he got another briefing, an exhortation to make it back early enough that evening for a pint or two of Courage in Colin’s local, and a rundown on how to reach the M40 from where they were. Bill smiled, nodded, agreed, waited.

  Finally, Colin Smart said: ‘I’m not doing wrong, am I, Bill? I’m not making a mistake, putting you in touch with Jane after all this time?’

  Bill shook his head.

  ‘Business, like I told you. There’s nothing between us, Col, there couldn’t be. For God’s sake man, d’you think I’m crazy? I’ll see you tonight. I’ll tell you all about it.’

  The traffic was appalling. It got worse visibly, ridiculously, every time he came to London. For nearly an hour, he never got the sporty little BMW out of third. The M40 was a disaster, too. Not so much a motorway, more a three-lane crawl. This country’s grinding to a halt, he thought. In Oxford he stopped and had a cup of coffee, studying the map. He was nervous, physically uncomfortable. He went to the lavatory, again without success, and drank more coffee, read a paper. He wondered if Jane worked at one of the colleges, or if she worked at all, except at home. It was late afternoon. Even if she went into an office she might be back. She was not married, Colin had said, but as to a boyfriend, who knew? Bill ran his forefinger along the route he had pencilled in, then paid his bill. The unease in his stomach did not go away.

  It was a terrace in a long one-way street. He had to park a hundred yards away and walk. The house was narrow, with lace curtains, neat and unexpected. The front door was bright yellow. Bill pressed the doorbell and heard it buzz. After a few moments he heard footsteps. He heard the Yale lock turn.

  Jane Heywood stood in front of him in jeans and a lemon-coloured shirt. Her hair was shorter, her face older, her eyes wide and startled. Bill Wiley felt as if he was going to drop.

  ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Bill. What do you want?’

  ‘What do you know about Rudolf Hess?’ he said.

  Ten

  As an introduction line, after all that time and all that had passed between them, it was absurd. It had not been calculated, but it worked. Jane Heywood, instantly, was laughing. Bill felt that keenly, not as relief but pain. She had always laughed, he had always made her laugh. It hurt.

  ‘Rudolf Hess?’ she said. ‘Not a lot. Not enough to detain you, Mr Wiley. You’d best come in.’

  She had changed, and Bill wanted to pin it down, isolate the elements of the change. Her hair was shorter, and in a style he thought of as ‘old-fashioned’. It was dark and clingy, close to her skull and sticking to the sides of her neck, just behind her square jawbone, in small, assertive strands. Her eyes were still startling, frank and very grey and widely set, but the new hair made her even more bold, somehow. She was alive with intelligence, snub-nosed, strong-chinned, and massively unafraid. Bill pictured her in a flapper dress, taking on the world, and simultaneously pictured his wife, pale and drooping, drugged and miserable. He thought: I ought to go. I ought to turn and run. Jane turned, and he followed her into the house.

  It was very tiny, and furnished in the style he remembered from Brixton. He remembered some of the furnishings as well, and some of the ornaments. The sofa they had made love on sometimes, once during breakfast. The toaster – faulty – had failed to pop the slices out, and they had finished amid clouds of smoke gushing from the kitchen, and gales of laughter. Jane had been at the square table working when he had rung the bell, and she returned to it, sitting on a hard dining chair with a loose floral cushion, surrounded by her notes and books. She indicated an easy chair for Bill, who took it, sinking into the upholstery, looking upwards into her face darkened by the window light behind it, feeling he might sink forever. Fuck, he thought. Wiley, pull yourself together, man. Think of someone else. Veronica, Chris, anybody. Fuck.

  Jane said: ‘I’ll get you a coffee in a minute. I felt really queer, seeing you standing there. I was halfway through a sentence. The best thing is to try and finish it, does that sound ridiculous? Deathless prose. Anyway, I’ve got to make a living.’

  Why ever she’d done it, he accepted. Better not to talk. Jane bent her head. Picked up a ballpoint, wrote. When she concentrated, she moved her mouth slightly, as if chewing on a secret. Sometimes the tip of her tongue appeared between her lips, then slipped out of sight. She rested her weight on her left elbow, wrote quickly, determinedly, hunched over the paper. Bill looked round the room, fought the hollowness inside, breathed more evenly. There was a clock on the mantelpiece, a thirties or a fifties clock, like a polished humpback bridge. It ticked softly. He was soothed.

  ‘Voila,’ said Jane, after five minutes. ‘Sorry about that. Was that sense? Thoughts don’t come often enough to let them get away, in any case, not good ones. Look, my hand’s trembling. You bastard
. What do you want?’

  She looked straight at him, and her eyes, maybe, were not quite so unafraid as he had thought. She jumped up, turned towards the kitchen at her back. As she did so, the sun shone through her lemon shirt and Bill, for the fraction of a second, saw her breast outlined, pictured as if naked, the nipple, everything. Then it was gone and Jane was in the kitchen doorway, her back to him.

  ‘Coffee,’ she remembered. ‘Instant. No sugar, splash of milk. I’m going to close the door. Sorry. Read the paper.’

  Bill Wiley could smell sweat, sharp, from his own armpits. He stood, looking round the room, thinking of her outlined breast. The room, even though knocked through from front to back of the terrace, was very small. It was pale, oatmeal and green, with a sofa-bed in the front window, a TV set, a stereo, three armchairs and a lot of fat beanbag cushions that one could sit or sink on. Or make love. He studied the pictures, too modern for his taste, gaudy daubs that no doubt cost the earth. He picked up the paper and dropped it. The Guardian. He did not trust himself to read the Guardian.

  Jane’s face was serious when she returned. She put the coffee mugs on a corner of the table, and quickly swept her notes into a pile. She put them to one side, collected up the books, and piled them on the notes, leaving most of the table clear. She put her mug on one side, nearest the kitchen door, and slid Bill’s to the place opposite. She sat and took a sip. Wiley, hesitating briefly, sat opposite. They both drank.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t get in touch,’ she said at last. ‘It’s years, it’s over two, it’s getting on for three. What went wrong?’

  She was not smiling. The clear grey eyes avoided his.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t mind. Not after so long. I thought you’d be married or something. Have another bloke. I didn’t think it would matter that much.’

  ‘It doesn’t. It shouldn’t, anyway. I mean, it shouldn’t mean a thing, should it? A few months, a long time ago. Oh, I don’t know. It’s still a shock. Don’t you feel that?’

  ‘Yeah. Worse than I expected. Although I was expecting something.’

  She glanced at him. Then away.

  ‘What? As the injured party? The one who got the bum’s rush?’

  ‘No, no. No, Christ Jane. I’m not that stupid. No, I meant… I had anticipation to contend with. I knew I was coming. Ringing the doorbell. Waiting. At least you had no idea who was out there. It could’ve been the milkman.’

  ‘Mm.’

  They drank their coffee. Bill studied her, in detail, surreptitiously, ready to withdraw his gaze. She was recovering, relaxing. So was he. She was just a woman. Someone he had liked or loved. Nothing ultra special. She glanced up, caught him at it. They both smiled, their eyes level.

  ‘You’ve deteriorated,’ she said. ‘You look older. Your back’s not straight. Did you get made redundant, or something? You look battered.’

  Wiley laughed aloud.

  ‘You cheeky bitch. It’s probably old age. You don’t look so hot yourself. Anyway, you always said I was a secret service man. They don’t get made redundant, do they?’

  ‘You tell me. And come on, Wiley! If you’re not a secret service man, why are you asking about Rudolf Hess? I wasn’t born exactly yesterday, you know. Or have you become a historian as well? That would explain the drab dull look, at least!’

  He had thought this out. His cover story. He was still in the business, but on his own these days, he was in consultancy, research. He had been approached by a man who was thinking of putting money into a new book on the Hess affair, who had been convinced that there was in fact a conspiracy afoot but wanted independent views before he parted with the cash. There was, he told her disingenuously – taking his information and his cue from Mr Boswell – a whole group of people, in several countries, who were sure that something fishy was being covered up. It sounded cracked to him, but it was money, so why not?

  The wide grey eyes were unreadable.

  ‘Two things,’ said Jane. ‘Why me, why you? I’m not an expert on the era, which I’m sure you know quite well, and if this supposed backer wants an opinion on the Hess affair and you know nothing about it, why go to you? I’ve heard of the Hess freaks, what historian hasn’t? Why doesn’t your mystery backer ask a Hess freak?’

  ‘Because it’s one of them that wants his money. He needs an independent voice. A bit of background. A cool-hand Luke. Me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  So that was that. Impasse. Bill thought again. He thought of options. He could not see any.

  ‘Your Uncle Edward,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’

  Jane was angry, although she tried to hide it. His ploy had been pathetic, and it was blown. Should she have been flattered that he had come to see her, or have slammed the door in his face? Academic. He had not come to see her after all. Bill, gleaning all this from her face, wondered what he should have said. ‘Look, I need your help, I’ve been told to murder Hess’? Maybe not.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’m not an expert but Edward is, your memory does you credit. But he’s hardly going to talk to you about it, is he? Bill, you’re lying, I don’t know what you’re up to. Let’s change back to realities, shall we? How’s your wife? How’s your life? What have you been doing these last few years?’

  He had hurt her, she was fighting back. Bill said: ‘Jane. I am an agent. Don’t boot me out, please. Listen.’

  It sounded ridiculous. There wasn’t any way of saying it that did not sound ridiculous. To think he’d once been proud of it, felt special. How Liz must have hated him, despised him. An agent. A secret agent. A spy. An eternal adolescent, with a gun.

  Robert Nairac always used the same gun. An obscure automatic. A Star. You could trace his history by it. Ridiculous.

  ‘An agent,’ repeated Jane. She added, melodramatically. ‘At last the truth is out! What, MI5, MI6? Should I be thrilled?’

  ‘Piss off,’ said Bill, gently. The whole thing seemed hopeless, impossible. ‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ he said. ‘We were talking about my wife.’

  Something in his face slowed her down. She dropped the mockery.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell. She’s in a bad way. We live in Ireland now, the North. I’m attached to a brigade. The Army. We live in married quarters and I roam the countryside running sources, as we call it. Handling a variety of crooks, and traitors, and idealists. They tell me things about the terrorists for money or for other reasons, and I feed the information into the melting pot. We all try to stay alive.’

  ‘And Liz is in a bad way. Why, exactly?’

  Exactly, Bill did not think he knew. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was beginning to.

  ‘Perhaps it’s not much fun,’ he said. ‘They sit there in their little boxes while the men live lives. At the top of the estate, at the gateway in the wire, there’s a sentry post, men with machine guns, you know. Inside, well in, there’s the brigadier’s house, out of RPG range, armed guards all round it, searchlights, maximum security. How many brigadiers have died in Ireland in twenty years? How many have seen a terrorist, face to face? The wives drink and talk about nappy rash and going home to England, and watch blue films sometimes and have hen parties, and wonder why there’s no guards or searchlights on their houses, and risk the occasional quick fuck with their best friend’s husband while she’s shopping or inside for a scrape. Only occasionally, though, because estates have eyes and ears, especially married quarters. And the wages of this particular sin is death, give or take being still alive at the end of it. Black eyes and ostracism. Beatings behind walls that the stone deaf could hear through. “And where’s your man?” In Liz’s case, at work. Morning noon and night, day after day, day after day.’

  He was looking into the bottom of his mug. It was empty. Jane said nothing. Bill sighed.

  ‘I should have left her and run away with you,’ he said. ‘I think I was in love with you, probably. Do you remember I had a son? Johnnie? H
e’s eleven now. It was his birthday yesterday. No, day before. He watches me and Liz and it tears my guts to pieces.’ He raised his eyes to hers, ruefully. ‘Excuses in advance. The coward’s way out. I can’t leave her now because of him.’

  There was a long silence. Jane stood, and took both mugs through to the kitchen. This time she left the door open. The kettle clicked, and soon began to sing and buzz. He heard the coffee jar lid snap off, a spoon tinkle. The kettle clicked and the boiling water splashed into the mugs. She returned.

  ‘Not,’ he went on, as she sat, ‘that I’m expecting you to want me back. I’m not insane, I just express myself badly. I’m sorry if that was how it sounded.’

  She moved her head. A small negative.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bill. It sounds terrible. And is there nothing you can do? I mean, can’t you leave, or anything? Don’t they give you time off? Compassionate? And what’s this Hess stuff? I mean, what’s that got to do with it? Why did you come to me?’

  ‘Oh, it’s all too complicated. I can’t bear to think about it. Tell me about you. How have you been? You’re not married. Is there..? I suppose I’m not entitled to ask, really.’