Confirm or Deny

by Graham Ison

  “Pleased to meet you.” Weston sat down and held up a stubby pipe. “D’you mind?” he asked.

  “Please do.” Gaffney took out his packet of cigars and lighted one.

  “I suppose you’re here about Hodder and the Dickson business?”

  “D’you see a connection, then, Mr Weston?”

  “Call me Fred. No, I don’t see a connection. Just assume there has to be one, that’s all.”

  “I’d better show you the DG’s letter of authority—”

  Weston held up his hand. “Don’t bother. I’ll answer your questions.” He laughed. “We’ve got no bloody secrets left here. One or two more won’t hurt.”

  “How well did you know Geoffrey Hodder, Fred?”

  “Well enough. We’ve both been in the service for donkey’s years. Mind you he was typical of the old school – wouldn’t give you the time of day till he’d checked it with the DG for clearance.” He chuckled. “I’m a bit different. Seen it all before. The panic and the looking over shoulders; the ad hoc conferences in the corridor – all that. Get fed up with it, tell you the truth. I’ll be glad to retire.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Another ten years yet, God help me. Unless I can get early retirement.”

  “We spoke to Douglas Craven this morning. He said that Geoffrey Hodder kept himself very much to himself.”

  “Yes, well he would with Craven – jumped-up little pillock.”

  “I take it you don’t like him?” asked Gaffney with a smile.

  “Don’t like him or dislike him, as a matter of fact. He’s just there – a bloody nonentity.” Weston fiddled with his pipe and replaced it in his mouth. “He’s typical of the new breed. Started off in the army, but didn’t get anywhere. Comes in here thinking he knows it all – lording it about the place just because he was an officer. Me – I was a corporal in the air force. National Service.” He blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “This business with Geoff-what happened there? Commit suicide did he?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well he was dead worried about this Dickson thing. Mind you, he’d been worried before that, what with Nikitin and—” He paused. “—the East German, er—”

  “Gesschner.”

  “That’s the fellow. I think he felt some personal responsibility for them going off course.”

  “Was he justified in thinking that?”

  “Search me. He was in charge, so I suppose he felt something. But you can worry too much in this job. Then there was his home life…”

  “What about it?”

  “He’d been divorced, you know.”

  “Oh?” Gaffney pretended he hadn’t known that.

  “Oh yes. Quite a to-do by all accounts. Bit messy is the expression, I think.”

  “How did you know that? Did he tell you?”

  Weston smiled and shook his head. “No, not Geoffrey. But you hear things, you know. Always been a bit of a listener, me.” That came as a surprise to Gaffney; Weston had done nothing but talk since he had entered the room. “Hotbed of gossip, this place. You hear these little chits of typists nattering in the lifts and in the canteen. Well in our job you get into the habit of eavesdropping – bit like your business, I suppose.” Gaffney wasn’t sure whether that was flattery or condescension, took it for the former, with a leavening of ignorance. “You know what it’s like. Somebody knows somebody whose auntie lives in the next village. Only trouble is it gets a bit distorted – send three-and-fourpence, I’m going to a dance, sort of set-up. But by all accounts, wife number one caught him in bed with she who is now wife number two.” Weston stopped to laugh – a deep rumble. “I must say I find it hard to believe of old Geoffrey. Still they say there’s a bit of Hyde in all us Jekylls.”

  “Wouldn’t that have affected his vetting, though?” asked Gaffney.

  “Not really – gave it a hiccup; a bit of a murmur, as you might say. May even have cost him a promotion, but you can’t tell.”

  “Do you think Hodder could have been the mole?”

  “No!”

  “You seem firm on that?”

  “As firm as I can be. I look at it this way. If you’re giving away the firm’s recipes, you aren’t going to look as worried about it as he was, not unless you’re a bloody good actor, are you?”

  “Unless he was under pressure.”

  “Unlikely in this business. We all know the rules. If you slip up – you know, moneywise, or a bit of adultery – and get caught at it, you see the DG and confess. You might lose your job, but it’s a bloody sight better than losing twenty-five years of your freedom. Leastways, that’s the theory. We all know the way the Russians work – Christ, we should. Know the sort of pressure they exert – seen it dozens of times. Still—” he paused, “—there’s always one, I suppose. But Geoffrey Hodder – no, I don’t somehow see him as a mole. Course that’s not much help to you, John, is it? You’ve got to have evidence.”

  Gaffney nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid that hearsay, helpful though it can sometimes be, is not really of much assistance in the long run.”

  “Well if there’s any way I can help…” Weston sat upright on the hard chair, knees apart and hands resting lightly on them; it gave him the appearance of a large, friendly bear.

  “Have you any ideas? Who would have known enough – who could have been the agent?”

  “We can all speculate, but that’s no help. No, John, quite frankly there isn’t anyone.”

  “What about Selby?” It was Tipper riding his favorite hobby-horse again.

  Weston shifted forward, placing his elbows on his knees and loosely linking his fingers between them. “I’ll be quite honest with you,” he said. “I think Master Selby’s a bloody queer, and I don’t like queers. But frankly I don’t think he’s intelligent enough to be a mole.”

  “But he’s a Cambridge graduate…”

  “You don’t have to be intelligent to get a degree,” said Weston. “Just a slogger. And I should know – I’ve got one.”

  “What in?” asked Gaffney.

  “Geography,” said Weston, and then he grinned. “That’s how I know my way about.”

  “But surely, if Selby’s a homosexual, he’d never have got clearance.”

  Weston grinned again. “Don’t you believe it. I’ve known a few – here what’s more.” He waved a hand airily around the office. “But it’s another thing to prove it. And it doesn’t follow that just because you aren’t married you’re queer. It worries them though. I was single for seven years between marriages, and they started to look at me a bit askance. That wasn’t too bad; it was when the other unmarried blokes started looking at me I really got the wind up.” He rumbled his deep laugh again. “I think it worried Geoffrey a bit—”

  “What, your not being married?”

  “God no – Selby not being married. I think that’s why he never told him much. Never trusted him – and neither do I, but in my case it’s probably because I hate his guts, pompous little prat.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jim Anderson was down-to-earth. He was forty years of age, had a normal wife and two normal children. “I heard you’d been talking to people in the office,” he said. “About these jobs that have been going wrong, is it?”

  Gaffney nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Is there anything you can add?”

  Anderson shook his head glumly. “No, not really. I suppose you must think there’s a mole in the outfit somewhere.”

  “What do you think, Mr Anderson?”

  “Well I must admit it looks a bit that way, happening three times, but I can’t immediately think of anyone – but then you never can, can you?”

  “How much did you know of the last operation, the Armitage – Dickson affair?”

  “Not much. Nothing had really happened – then suddenly it had all gone haywire – over – finished.”

  “What did Geoffrey Hodder tell you?”

  “Only that there was a job on, that was about all. We were
really on stand-by, just in case. There’s nothing abnormal about that. You get these things every so often. Half the time nothing ever comes of them, and frankly I thought that’s what had happened this time. I was quite surprised to hear about the arrest, but again that’s not unusual. After all it’s you blokes who take care of that side of it for us, isn’t it? I wasn’t sorry, really. There are times I get fed up with this job. ’Fraid I can’t develop the wild enthusiasm the others manage. You’d think they were all James Bonds, the way they scuttle about whispering in corners, or being terribly secretive as though they’re doing something frightfully important. And what is it at the end of the day? In nine cases out of ten it’s a load of rubbish. I don’t mean the spy jobs of course – I’m talking about gamering odd snippets of information, and when you analyze them it’s nonsense.”

  “You sound a bit disillusioned, Mr Anderson.”

  “Not really, no. But there are times when I wish that this lot wouldn’t take themselves so damned seriously. They ponce about late at the office with bits of paper; you’d think that this country was on the verge of revolution to hear some of them talk. All I want to do is get home. D’you know I’m trying to rebuild my kitchen? I’m swinging the whole thing round, putting a run of cupboards right along one wall, and putting the sink-unit under the window with a—”

  Gaffney held up his hand with a smile. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, Mr Anderson, but can we just get back to the point.”

  Anderson laughed, and ran a hand round his chin. “Sorry,” he said. “One of my passions, DIY; that and jazz.”

  “What we’re trying to discover,” continued Gaffney, indicating Tipper with a sweep of his hand, “is why Geoffrey Hodder should have died.”

  “That was a bit of a shock. I must admit that he’d looked a bit off color lately—”

  “In what way?”

  “Difficult to say. I suppose he’d been a bit introverted – more so than usual; never very forthcoming was Geoffrey, but I never thought he was the sort to take his own life. That is what happened, isn’t it? Nobody seemed quite sure.”

  “We don’t know.” Gaffney perpetuated the myth. So far he had found that the suggestion of a mystery about Hodder’s death had a sobering effect, made people sit up and take notice, and wonder. “The main reason for our being here is to investigate Geoffrey Hodder’s death.”

  “But I thought you were investigating the leaks.”

  “What leaks?”

  Anderson looked around helplessly. “But everyone knows—”

  “Knows what?”

  “You said you were here to enquire into the leaks.”

  Gaffney shook his head. “No, Mr Anderson. You raised it. You asked if I was here about the jobs that have been going wrong. That’s the phrase you used, I think. I just nodded. But perhaps there’s a connection. What do you think?”

  “They’re a nervous bunch here at the best of times,” said Anderson, “but when things like that start happening, they get to looking over their shoulders – we all do, I suppose – wondering. You start to ask yourself questions, and stop trusting each other. It’s pretty demoralizing. You look at people, thinking that it might be him – or her.”

  “What d’you think of Selby, Mr Anderson?”

  “Why d’you ask about him, in particular?” Anderson looked sharply at the detective.

  “No reason,” lied Gaffney. “He was a member of the team, that’s all.”

  “Well I’ll be quite frank with you, Mr Gaffney, I don’t like him. He’s a pompous arse; thinks he’s so much better than everyone else. Well it doesn’t cut any ice with me. There are a few like him here. Just because they’ve had a superior sort of education they think they can lord it over everyone else.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “Yes – that and the doubts I’ve got about his masculinity.”

  “You mean you think he’s homosexual?” asked Tipper.

  “Yes – not to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Anderson seemed puzzled by the question. “Well, you’ve only got to look at him to see that he’s a bloody pansy.”

  “He’s been positively vetted.”

  “Pah!” Anderson dismissed that. “So were Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, Blake…” He counted them off on his fingers. “And there are plenty more – you know that, Mr Gaffney.”

  Gaffney had to admit that he had a point. “But if there had been any proof of homosexuality, he wouldn’t have been cleared – wouldn’t be here, in this job.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on it. You know how the system works. Anyone who’s refused clearance can ask for a hearing by the three wise men – the Security Tribunal. Then the vetting people have to put up or shut up. I tell you, Mr Gaffney, they’ve got to have a cast iron case before they’ll risk it.”

  “I’m afraid that that still doesn’t make Selby a homosexual.”

  “He’s not married, though, is he.”

  Gaffney smiled. “A lot of people aren’t married. That doesn’t necessarily make them queer, does it?”

  “No, but he’s effeminate as well – and he likes weird music.”

  “So does my chief inspector; but how did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “That he likes early music?”

  “He’s always bragging about it, boasting – giving the impression that he’s superior to everyone else.”

  “What you’re really saying is that you don’t like him, and because he looks down at you, you’ve decided he’s a poof. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “No – not at all.” But Gaffney knew that that was probably the reason. Anderson was an ordinary sort of chap, doing what he saw as an ordinary sort of job. He couldn’t abide the gratingly arrogant airs of educational snobs like Selby. The simplest way of dismissing them was to describe them as homosexuals. Gaffney thought he might be right, but for entirely different reasons.

  *

  “Did you get the impression that no one likes our Mr Selby, Harry?”

  Tipper nodded. “I don’t bloody well like him either, sir.”

  “However, just because he is universally disliked does not, of itself, give us any reason for assuming that he’s a mole.”

  “No,” said Tipper. “Pity, that.”

  “What we’ve really got,” said Gaffney, looking at the window and noting that the Venetian blinds needed cleaning, “is a bloody great load of nothing.”

  “That’s certainly how much most of them seemed to know in advance about this latest job.”

  “The irony of it is that the only bloke who apparently knew all about all three jobs is Hodder – and he topped himself.”

  “QED!” said Tipper, sinking down into Gaffney’s easy chair and staring at the ceiling.

  “Pardon?”

  “Perhaps that’s the answer. Two jobs go wrong. A third comes up – that’s a stumer. You set it up, but he doesn’t know that. But straight afterwards you have him up here and give him a going over. Result: goes home, panics, and tops himself.”

  Gaffney laughed. “Great! But just supposing what you say is right. He’s working for the Russians, and warns them off in the first two cases. After the second one he knows the heat’s on. What would you do, in his place? You’d tell your masters to cool it for a bit, wouldn’t you. If they’d got a man like Hodder placed in MI5 they wouldn’t want to sacrifice him for a twopenny-ha’penny job like Armitage – Dickson. If – and it’s a big if – if he was a plant, he’d have been there for a long time – a sleeper.”

  “Could they have turned him, guv’nor?”

  “I doubt they’d take the risk, Harry. A long-term sleeper is the best bet. With a plant – in a place like Five – they’d never have known whether he was doubling, and the Soviets aren’t terribly keen on being had over.” He sighed. “Perhaps the answer lies in his private life. From what we’ve heard from his colleagues, he doesn’t sound the type of man to get inv
olved in some village sex scandal, and yet Mrs Bates, the PC’s wife, seemed to have all the facts at her fingertips. And then there’s what the army said about him being a womanizer.”

  “Yeah, but everybody’s human, guv’nor, and if a woman like Julia Hodder made a play for him I shouldn’t think she’d have met much resistance. She certainly wouldn’t from me, I can tell you.”

  Gaffney laughed. “I’d sort of worked that out for myself, Harry.”

  “So what do we do now? See the Harrises?”

  “Yes, Harry, I think we do.”

  *

  The Harrises lived in an elegant house on the outskirts of Hitchin. Dick Harris explained that he had been promoted about fifteen months previously, and transferred to the firm’s offices at Welwyn Garden City. The journey from Surrey had proved too tiring and time-consuming, and somewhat reluctantly he and his family had moved to their present house.

  “But you intrigue me,” said Harris as they settled in the spacious sitting room. “Why do the police want to talk to me?”

  Gaffney had telephoned him earlier in the day but had declined to tell him what his enquiry was about, although he had assured him, as the police always had to with law-abiding citizens, that he had done nothing wrong. Gaffney had particularly wanted to talk to Harris’s wife as well; consequently it had had to be an evening visit, something which pleased neither Gaffney nor Tipper, but which they shrugged off as one of the constant inevitabilities of police duty.

  “I think you should offer our guests a drink, Dick,” said his wife.

  “I’m sorry…” He started to get out of his chair.

  Gaffney stayed him with a gesture. “No, thank you very much.”

  “Coffee, then?” Tina Harris was not going to give up.

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” said Gaffney. What he meant was that he wanted to get home as soon as possible.

  “It’s no trouble,” she said, “it’s already on. It’ll only take a couple of seconds.”

  “I want to talk to you about Geoffrey Hodder,” said Gaffney, when they were finally settled with cups of coffee.