The Secret Servant hm-1

by Gavin Lyall

  Now they knew she lived on the houseboat. Knock on that door, and get no answer. Would they then kick it down? Why should they? If it was an accident, then there was no point, and if it was murder then they might be lousing up the evidence.

  They wouldn't be looking for an important letter.

  The Lough ran north and south at that point, so he came from the south, against the damp chill wind and the noises drifting down on it. He had spent half an hour waiting in the parked car for his eyes to adjust, and there were glimpses of a quarter moon above the restless clouds, so he could move accurately. Even then, after two minutes creeping through the reeds and nettles at the water's edge he was soaked through, particularly his feet, in bedroom slippers. But he also had somebody else's raincoat, pinched from the hotel coat-room. He felt worse about that than concealing evidence of a murder or being about to effect a burglarious entry, but his own coat had to look fresh and clean tomorrow.

  Up beyond the field there was a faint glow among the trees where the Gardai were still working on the burned car. Ahead, the houseboat was just a dark shape on slightly less dark water. He lay and listened carefully, feeling cold but confident. Nobody out there in the night belonged as much as he did. It might be their country, but darkness and stealth were his trade.

  There was no-one on or in the houseboat, no lights, no sounds. And why should anyone be there? What was there to guard? He crawled the last twenty yards because he would be outlined against the Lough, and crawled the creaking gangplank, too.

  He worked his way all around the boat, trying the windows and a hatch on the foredeck, but they were all shut tight. It had to be the cabin door. Like most boat doors, that slid rather than swung on hinges. He took a small metal beer-can opener, rather out-dated since cans had grown pull-rings but still hardly a suspicious possession, and started levering at the top glide track. It came loose gradually, except for one sudden jerk and a crack that sounded nuclear, but probably wouldn't carry twenty yards against the wind. Then the door sagged loose, hingeing on its lock, and he slipped inside.

  Now I really am on my own, he thought. No story in the world, up to and including the truth, can help now.

  He pulled the curtains – there were reasonably light-proof – across the shore-side windows, and started working under brief flashes from a pinhole torch. This was no police search, slow and meticulous, but a whirlwind burglary. He emptied every drawer onto the floor, then threw it onto the bed or sofa. Every piece of paper that could be the letter went straight into a shopping bag, the rest scattered anywhere. Clothes, books, food, cushions, bedclothes, piled up on the floor. But this time, nobody was going to come home and weep with shock at the desecration.

  The gangplank creaked.

  Maxim stopped feeling bad about the stolen raincoat. He put the shopping bag down in a safe corner, the torch in his pocket and took out the flick-knife. The houseboat tilted as weight came aboard, and there was a slight sound from the cockpit, but only very slight.

  One person, just one, but one who knew how to move as quietly as possible. Not a policeman. A policeman wouldn't bother to move quietly unless he had suspicions, and if he had them he'd have a lot of friends as well.

  A brilliant light beam stabbed across the cabin, flicked one side and the other and hit Maxim in the eyes. The light went out and the man behind it was charging for him.

  Dazzled, Maxim stepped to his left to give his knife hand more room and snicked the blade open. He trod on a cushion and skidded off balance just as the man tripped on something else and crashed into his legs. Then they were flailing wildly around the wreckage of the raped cabin. This was no policeman and no simple burglar either, but a trained fighting man who acted and reacted like a crazed cobra. Every move was supposed to be deadly, and everything became a weapon. A foot stabbed past Maxim's left ear, then an empty drawer smashed against the table leg above him. He got his left hand on a piece of clothing and rammed the knife blade into it.

  The man let go a snarling gasp, and jerked away.

  Maxim flicked on his pinhole torch. Sitting in the carnage but six feet away – a surprising distance – was a square-shaped man with a square face blinking in the feeble light. He was holding a hand to the outside of his left thigh, where the knife had gone in.

  "Stay just where you are," Maxini said. And he stayed where he was himself, playing the thin beam over the man. He was probably a few years younger than Maxim, with a rather blobby nose, wide mouth and coarse grainy skin, a face that made you think the sculptor had meant to spend another day on it. He was wearing a dark muddy anorak, with the zip now torn loose.

  "The police are up on the road," the man said. He had a very slight accent.

  "I know. Any good reason why I shouldn't scream for them?"

  "I perhaps could think of one or two. And so could you." Maxim let the torch beam droop, but he wasn't going to get any closer. If they tangled again, one of them was going to get killed and he wasn't too confident about which one.

  "If you can walk away from this," he said, "you can walk away."

  The man considered it. When the Gardai came down the field, there would be a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of time in which to do it. Neither of them wanted that.

  "Okay." He levered himself to his feet. By now the wound must be stiffening the leg, something else that Maxim had been counting on. The gangplank creaked again, the boat swayed and steadied, and Maxim lifted the curtain of one window to watch the figure hobble quickly away.

  Now he was really hurrying. Allowing himself little squirts of light from the torch, he kicked the papers and clothing into a heap, added some of the lighter furniture and soaked it all with paraffin from the stove and a two-gallon can he found in a cupboard in the bows. Then he cut three two-foot lengths from a handful of thick white string and left them to soak in the paraffin.

  On deck, he undid the anchor and the stern line, and loosened the one at the bows. Then down into the rancid fumes of the cabin, where he laid the three fuses on a dry patch of floor and lit them. They began to burn steadily, like wicks, creeping towards the heap. At least one should stay alight, giving him, he reckoned, a two-minute start. He ran up into the fresh cold night air, threw off the bow rope and pushed the houseboat out with the gangplank. It moved very slowly and ponderously, but it moved, the bows swinging as the rain-fed current in the Lough caught hold. Already it was too far out for anybody to reach. He started running.

  He passed one wall and nobody had shouted, then another. There was no sound, but a ripple of light on the water made him stop and look back. The houseboat was about fifteen yards out, still swinging downstream, the curtained windows glowing. Then one of the curtains vanished in a flare of pink-white light and the window cracked like a shot…

  Watching fires, especially those you've started yourself, is as basic a human instinct as throwing stones at water. He forced himself to run on. Up at the lane, somebody called out and a car engine started.

  An hour later, after the hotel had locked up for the night, Maxim climbed off the furnace room roof and into his bedroom window, jammed slightly open by a wedge of folded paper.

  22

  At Shannon airport they had set up a trestle table even before the check-in desks so that they could search all your luggage. And it was nothing to do with terrorism or hijacking: the searchers even looked at the soles of Maxim's shoes. But the slippers were in the Lough, along with the stolen raincoat and the flick-knife. He would miss that.

  Standing beside the table there were two professionally hard-eyed men, and a third who was elderly and had a plump ugly face and a sad expression. One of the plain-clothes men stepped forward. "Excuse me, but would you mind showing me some identification? It's just security."

  Don't be too co-operative. Maxim frowned, looked puzzled, and said: "Yes. All right." He gave them his driving licence.

  "Would you have anything else?"

  "Why?"

  "Just security." He was thin, with a long
sour face.

  Maxim shrugged. "Here, take the bloody lot." There was nothing in his wallet to let him down: no ID card or calling cards or Mo D pass. He could even have brought his passport, since like most officers he had put his occupation as 'Government official', but the pattern of visas in it would be a giveaway to anybody who knew those places where the sun still hadn't set on the British Army.

  The older man was staring at him with a sorrowful anger.

  "You'll have been staying here how long, sorr?" the second detective asked in a soft apologetic voice. He was larger, a comfortable man in a short tweed coat.

  "Just a couple of nights?"

  "Was it a business trip, sorr?"

  "Not really. I was looking at a property a friend and I were thinking of buying into. Up in the Silvermine Mountains. What's this about?"

  "Did you ever hear of the name Jackaman?" the first one asked.

  "I don't think so." You bloody fool: if they ask what you do, you'll have to say you work in Whitehall. Of course you know the name Jackaman. "Yes. There was a civil servant. He committed suicide. Is that the one?"

  "Sort of. You didn't know Mrs Jackaman?"

  "Didn't know either of them."

  "So it's just a coincidence, you being here?" They were playing it sweet and sour: the first one asking the tough tactless questions, the second being gentle and sympathetic. Damn the flight for being so empty that they had time for that charade. Maxim would have liked a queue of impatient passengers behind him. He'd even have bought them their tickets.

  "What the hell do you mean by coincidence?"

  The old man burst out: "My sister was burnt to death last night!"

  That was where he'd seen the fat piggy face before.

  "I'm very sorry. But… do you mean she was murdered?"

  "There are some unexplained aspects, as you might say, sorr," the second policeman said quickly.

  "Well, I'm sorry. But I don't go around burning people."

  Only houseboats.

  He was wearing his 'civil servant' blue suit, striped shirt and a tie that would have looked dull on an undertaker. Of course, if that was the way arsonists and murderers were dressing this season… Then, thank God, there were a couple of more roughly dressed characters getting their luggage searched behind him.

  The first detective gave an impatient snort. "Can I have the address of the house you were looking at?" He played his part well, unless he was just anti-English anyway.

  Maxim gave them Rafford's address and phone number. They already had his own address, from the driving licence.

  "Will you be buying it?"

  "It needs more work than we'd realised. We'll see."

  "Thank you for your help, sorr."

  Maxim said to the old man: "I hope they…" The old man ignored him, and Maxim walked past.

  Jonathan St. John Rafford would be climbing the wall if they mentioned booby-trapped cars and burned-out houseboats. Maxim decided to ring him, but not hastily. The police wouldn't have time to check for a while.

  The flight was delayed. He drank a cup of coffee, then walked around the windowless, timeless hangar of a departure lounge that was far too big for the number of passengers at that time of year. The duty-free display was a supermarket in itself, and he was startled by the prices until he realised they were in dollars. Then he was only half-startled. But he ought to get something for Chris and his parents… why did you feel compelled to buy something in an airport? Pilots obviously didn't.

  "Did you hear about the terrible fire?" a slightly accented voice said.

  Maxim turned slowly. "What fire?"

  "Two of them, in fact." On the far side-of a rack of candles shaped like Guinness bottles and flowers and apples, there was a square coarse-grained face with rather unfinished features.

  The face smiled. "There was a fire in a car and then there was a fire in a boat. You should have heard it on the radio."

  "Did anybody get hurt?"

  "In the car, somebody was killed."

  "Did anybody get hurt?" Maxim repeated.

  The face smiled again. The hair above it was dark and neat, brushed straight back from a high forehead with a slight widow's peak. There were heavy bags under the dark eyes, permanent ones, not just from a late night.

  "Nobody got hurt very badly," the face said.

  "I'm glad to hear that."

  "So you had no trouble with the search? There was no mud on your shoes, and no smell of paraffin on your clothes? And your coat is so very clean. You are very careful. I think-I think you are Major Maxim of Downing Street."

  "I didn't catch your name."

  "Suppose I told the searchers who you are."

  "Then I would tell them to look at your left leg."

  The loudspeaker announced a flight to Paris, and the face turned away, still smiling, and saying: "Perhaps we'll meet again…"

  Now Maxim could see the square body, wearing a dark brown suit that was well cut but not by anybody in Britain. The walk was absolutely upright, with no hint of a limp. If he was working alone, he must have bandaged the leg himself: nobody would dare take such an obvious stab wound to a doctor. He might be full of pain-killers, of course, or well trained to pain. Or most likely, both.

  Maxim picked up a candle moulded as a pineapple. He was rather afraid his mother would like that. But first he had to ring Rafford.

  23

  The room was neon lit and deliberately featureless, without any decoration or pictures to remind you of anything. Just the shelves of big leather-bound albums and an oak lectern like the ones where you spread out a newspaper in the public library.

  Maxim sat on a hard chair and turned the album's pages quickly. Each right-hand one had a dozen or so photographs, about the size of a patience card, slotted into it. He wouldn't easily have believed there were that many ugly people in the world. 145 He went right through the book, then turned back to a page in the middle. "That's him, if anybody is."

  It wasn't a normal mug shot, not the usual full-face of a convicted man, but a snatched picture that the victim wasn't supposed to know about. Maxim wondered if this one really hadn't known.

  The Branch man leaned over his shoulder and lifted the photograph out to see what was written on the back. Without a word, he handed it to Agnes.

  "I admire your taste," she said. "He goes around as Lajos Komocsin, Hungarian businessman. He must be at least part Hungarian or he wouldn't get away with it, but the current theory is that he's a Major Azarov from the KGB. Not known to be assigned anywhere."

  "Whoever he is, he's a professional. As well trained as I am, and younger."

  "But just as modest with it, I've no doubt." She passed the photograph back to the Branch inspector. "And now he's got a distinguishing scar on the outside front of his left thigh, is that right?"

  "Around there."

  "So if he ever comes at us with his trousers down, we can shoot without asking questions."

  "Yes, Miss." The inspector made a note and went on looking at Maxim with a wary smile.

  "It wasn't on your patch," Agnes reassured him. "Not even in this country. Come on, Harry, the pumpkin may be back from the ball."

  The ball was really, in George's phrase, a 'Common Market rave-up'. To celebrate the end of a conference on energy conservation, the two big drawing rooms on the first floor were flooded with light and heat and jammed with guests in evening dress. Maxim and Agnes sneaked up the staircase feeling like very poor relatives.

  The butler recognised Maxim, looked apprehensively at his suit, and asked: "Should I announce you, sir?"

  "No thanks. But could you get word to Mr Harbinger that I'm in my room?"

  "Very good, Major." He sounded relieved. Beyond him, Maxim glimpsed the Prime Minister, weaving politely through the roar of cocktail chatter, stalked a few feet behind by a tall hawk-faced woman who ran the Press Office but was now busy brushing aside anybody she thought wasn't worth the PM's time. Most of the world fell into that category. Maxim w
asn't even in the world.

  The working parts of the house were discreetly closed off with elegant ropes attached to little wooden pillars. A uniformed messenger lifted aside the rope to the next staircase, winked, and said: "Nice to see somebody's minding the shop, sir."

  In his cubbyhole, Maxim turned on the light and drew the curtains. Agnes looked around.

  "Gawd, how you ruling classes do live. Swung any good cats recently?"

  Maxim had forgotten she'd never been there before. "I can do you tea or instant soup. Nothing stronger."

  "Never mind, I'll wait." He didn't realise just what she'd meant until George came in a few minutes later, wearing a very old-fashioned dinner jacket and carrying a nearly full bottle of champagne. He flopped in the desk chair, leaving Maxim leaning against the desk itself.

  "Oh God, but good causes do make bad parties. Have you got any glasses?" He pulled open his collar and unwound his tie, then poured champagne into Maxim's collection of tea/soup mugs. "So – how far have we got?"

  "We've established that the Other Side was represented there," Agnes said. "Harry's identified one."

  "How did they find her?"

  Maxim shook his head slowly. "A dozen ways. She'd read a couple of thrillers and thought she knew it all, then hid out a few miles from where she was born. She'd left a track like a tank going through a wheat field."

  George grunted.

  "Probably a Major Azarov," Agnes said. "We had him down as just a support agent, but Harry says he's a trained tearaway as well. Luckily we had our trusty flick-knife with us…"

  "A flick-knife?" George said heavily. He was slightly drunk, but knew it. "A flick-knife. You didn't tell me you were taking that.