by Len Deighton
‘What’s the score, Doc?’ I said when no explanation was forthcoming.
‘Nasty, isn’t it?’ said the doctor. ‘He took a dozen or more blows with a hammer.’
‘We have the hammer,’ said Squeaky.
‘Cause of death?’ I asked.
‘The killer wielded the hammer with tremendous force,’ said the doctor. ‘Right-handed man. You can almost rule out a woman; not many women with that sort of strength.’
‘We’re looking for a right-handed male tennis champion, are we Doc?’
‘I’m only trying to be helpful,’ said the doctor.
‘Just tell me the cause of death,’ I said slowly and clearly. ‘Mr Cruyer can write it into his notebook. Then we can all go home and get to bed.’
‘How can I be sure what happened or when?’ They always start off with a disclaimer. ‘Elderly man, viciously attacked: could be heart attack …’ He gave a quick look at me. ‘What the layman calls myocardial infarction. Or perhaps just old-fashioned shock. He has multiple skull fractures of course. One of the hammer blows made a deep puncture over the eye.’ He stooped to point. ‘That’s probably the one that did it. His eye on that side has a blown pupil. That’s usually a clincher. But I’m just a pill-pusher. You’d better wait for the post-mortem.’
‘He was standing up?’
‘Yes. He must have taken a gruesome amount of punishment before he went down. At least five blows. You can see from the blood splashes. More blows while he was on the ground. The top of the crown of his skull is intact.’
‘The hands?’
‘Fingers fractured and deep cuts. He tried to fight him off. Look for yourself.’
‘Who found him?’
The doctor nodded to the police officer from whom he’d heard it. ‘A sixteen-year-old kid … neighbour, lives three doors away. Kids come here and sniff glue.’
‘Where is the kid now?’
‘He’s with his parents and a woman police constable; he had to have a sedative.’
‘Time of death?’
‘I’ve no idea, except that it was today rather than yesterday. It’s damned cold in here. Sometime within the last eight hours.’
‘Okay,’ I said. Boxes and oil-drums were splashed with blood. There was lots of blood but the stains had gone dark and brown like last night’s dinner gravy. But most of the spattered stains formed a band of marks along the boxes; at what would have been head level when he was standing up being beaten to death.
‘Bloodstains and hairs on the hammer,’ said Squeaky. ‘It’s a straightforward killing. We’ve done all that Agatha Christie stuff before you arrived.’
‘What was in the pockets?’ I asked.
‘Someone had been there already,’ said Squeaky.
‘Any idea who it is, Bernard?’ Keith asked.
‘No papers on the body? Nothing at all?’ I asked innocently.
‘Good God, Bernard,’ said Squeaky in an exasperated voice. ‘It’s one of your people. Why the hell don’t you admit it? Identify him and let these people start clearing up the mess. Try being honest and co-operative for heaven’s sake. Bugger about here for another hour, and one of the newspapers will get hold of the story.’ He looked at me and more soberly added: ‘No, no identification papers on the body. Nothing of any significance on the body. Bus tickets, small change, fifty pounds sterling in tens. Keith is taking the wallet, and odds and sods for Forensic. Whoever did it went through the pockets with great care and attention.’
‘Or maybe that was done somewhere else and then he was brought here.’
‘We can’t rule that out,’ said Squeaky. ‘But you don’t believe it and neither do I.’
Dicky was writing in his notebook and didn’t look up.
‘It’s a German national,’ I said. ‘About sixty-five years old. Not one of our people. A freelance commercial pilot. We used him from time to time for arm’s-length jobs. I don’t know his real name. Is that honest and co-operative enough for you, Mr King?’
‘It will do for a start,’ said Squeaky, appeased perhaps by my polite use of his surname. ‘So what do you make of it?’
‘Some kind of meeting?’ I offered.
‘Obviously,’ said Squeaky. ‘Who? When? And why here?’
‘A building site like this is not bad,’ I said.
‘What about being seen by the workers?’
‘British building workers?’ interjected Dicky. ‘In winter? When did you last have any work done, Squeaky? These characters scamper off home right after lunch.’
‘But not premeditated,’ said Squeaky, ignoring Dicky’s levity. ‘The killer must have got covered in blood.’
I looked at him. Squeaky was a canny Scot. He might just be leading me on. I said: ‘I’d be more convinced it was spontaneous if we knew for certain the killer found the murder weapon here on site.’
The short intake of breath from Squeaky served to indicate exasperation. ‘That’s really baroque, Bernard. That would be quite a complicated scenario: killer comes along with the hammer, all prepared to get spattered with blood? Why not do it quickly and quietly. Silenced gun? Or a knife? Or bare hands? The victim wasn’t armed.’
‘You’re right, Mr King,’ I agreed.
‘Any next-of-kin, close friends or business associates that you know of? Wives? Girlfriends?’ He smirked. ‘Boy-friends?’
‘No one,’ I said. ‘He was a loner.’
‘So okay if we clear it all away?’ asked Squeaky, looking around. ‘By the way, we found this over there in the corner. I don’t think it has any bearing on the killing.’ He brought a transparent evidence bag from his case. Inside it there was Swede’s replica Navy Colt. ‘I suppose one of the kids who come here lost it.’
‘Sure, clear it all away. That’s okay with us, isn’t it, Dicky?’
‘We appreciate your prompt call to us,’ said Dicky, becoming suddenly diplomatic. ‘It wouldn’t have been much fun having the D-G read it in the Daily Mirror and wanting to know what’s what.’
Squeaky gave a grim nod. It wasn’t going to be in the Daily anything tomorrow morning, or any other morning. That was what Special Branch and the local law were sewing together when we arrived.
Dicky was very businesslike. He made sure they were not going to mess about and make us wait until the postmortem. Squeaky promised him a copy of the prelims, all the physicals – complete external exam, dental chart, scene-of-crime photos, fingerprints – and anything that Five’s Co-ordination people came up with on their data base. And Dicky wanted it all by end of work the following day. ‘And the “posting” as soon as it comes,’ Dicky added with an authoritative nod. It was almost as if he knew what he was talking about.
‘You knew him?’ the doctor asked me as the others turned and moved off, leaving me still staring at the body. I suppose he’d noticed I was a bit upset by the way I’d chewed into Squeaky, and then let him have it too.
‘Off and on over the years,’ I admitted. ‘In fact he got me out of trouble … a couple of times.’
‘If he’d been a bit younger he might have fought his killer off. He must have been a tough old bugger. But at that age the skull becomes thin and osteoporotic.’
‘Yes, we lost a tough old bugger,’ I said. ‘The best pilot in the world and as brave as hell.’
That Bret was sitting in his Rolls and parked round the corner was no great secret. Squeaky was renowned as a rule-book man: not at all the sort of man who would forget to stake out his meeting place with two or three of his instantly recognizable heavy-glove squad. I had no doubt that they were watching us now, their eyes in constant movement and their chins drawn into the collars of their black trenchcoats as they chatted unceasingly into their phones.
‘How did it go? Who was there?’ Bret asked. He stopped reading his Economist and folded the corner of the page to keep his place. I could tell that all Bret wanted was a brief confirmation that nothing catastrophic had happened.
‘Squeaky. With Golds to hold his hand
,’ said Dicky. ‘And a doctor … one of Bernard’s old drinking companions, I understand. So we have an inside line there if we need it.’
‘And what was the conclusion?’ said Bret.
‘It was the German pilot …’
‘The Swede,’ Bret corrected him gently.
‘They call him the Swede,’ said Dicky.
Having settled that misnomer, Bret’s curiosity seemed to wane. ‘No problems?’
‘I told you there was no need to come, Bret. They will fax all the medical junk tomorrow if you want to go through it.’
‘If there are no problems I don’t need to see any of it,’ said Bret emphatically. ‘I’ve got a desk that’s buried under work.’ With that self-assurance that inherited wealth provides, he ended the discussion. He switched off the reading light, tucked his Economist down the side of the seat, let his head loll back and closed his eyes.
Dicky said: ‘We’ll drop you off first, Bernard. You are nearest.’ He said it in a whisper in case Bret would be disturbed.
Until now my concern for the Swede had pushed from my mind the effect his death would have upon all my other plans and ideas. Now the consequences fell upon me like an icy avalanche of wet slush. I wasn’t going to Ireland or Cuba or South America. I wasn’t going anywhere; I would be staying here and putting up with all the crap the Department chose to dump upon me. There was no escape from consequences; that was a fact of life.
‘See you in the morning,’ said Dicky as he dropped me off at the apartment block.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
The apartment was dark and cold when I got upstairs. Fiona had left, but not before tidying up everything so that the place was pristine. She’d picked up the pieces of discarded tissue paper, and washed and put away the dishes, milk pan, and a coffee cup and saucer she’d used. The overlay had been taken off our double bed. It had been made up with clean starched sheets, and the pillows were arranged ready for me to go to bed. On the pillow at my side she’d placed the fabric camellia, like a token of love. I was suddenly troubled by the thought that her tears had been shed for our marriage.
You can see right across London from the top floor of our SIS building. Today was hazy, the cloud-filled sky bruised and battered; rain was expected at any minute. Last night I’d watched the steely clouds racing across the sky. This morning they had slowed. Now they were completely still; anchored and threatening like an extra-terrestrial armada waiting for the order to invade.
I was first to arrive in the No. 3 conference room, unless you count the Welsh lady who brews the tea for such gatherings. None of the others were on time. Bret came with the Director-General. Gloria, who was now appointed to a permanent position as Bret’s assistant, came with Bret’s newly appointed girl secretary. Soon after, Augustus Stowe, the abrasive Australian who used to have Dicky’s job, arrived. He was still trying to hold Operations together, and the black marks under his eyes and his general demeanour showed what it was taking out of him. Nevertheless, Stowe was always able to summon up energy in its bellicose form. He came in slapping his hands and shouting: ‘What are you idiots all sitting in the dark for? Switch on the bloody lights someone.’
Dicky hurried in breathless, wearing his new Armani trenchcoat. He was the last person to arrive. He obviously hadn’t even had time enough to look into his office for the cup of coffee that was awaiting him at ten-thirty each morning. I could see from one glance at his face that missing his regular dose of caffeine had made him resentful, peevish and dyspeptic.
‘I wish you had reminded me, Bernard,’ he hissed as he hung his raincoat on a wire hanger and pulled out his chair at the conference table. Dicky hated having his precious clothes on wire hangers; he had banished them from his own office, and from his home too.
Although Dicky, like others of the Department’s senior staff, sometimes used the No. 3 conference room as a snug hideaway, the rest of us knew it only as a place where we were summoned to give evidence, or be grilled about mishaps or disasters.
Today I wasn’t standing on the mat. I was among the eight important people seated at the highly polished coffin-shaped conference table and discussing ‘Departmental policy’. Each place was set with a new notepad, a sharpened pencil and a tumbler of water. There was also a copy of the minutes of the previous meeting, and an agenda for this one. My name did not appear on the agenda, but that did not mean anything when Bret was in the chair. And Bret was in the chair. He was seated across the table from me with a gold pencil in position; it was a heavy gold pencil that he clinked against the water glass when he wanted order, silence and attention. His new secretary sat next to him; a dark debby girl wearing a beige-coloured twin-set and pearls and an expensive watch. She was keeping a record of the meeting in longhand. It might have been an impossible task except for the way in which Bret said: ‘Don’t minute this’ frequently enough for her to catch up with the dialogue. In front of her there was an added responsibility: a tray with eight cups and saucers and two plates of biscuits together with milk jug, teapot and so on.
On the other side of Bret sat Gloria. She had come straight from the hairdresser. I could tell, for her hair shone with lacquer, and she never used that at home. Gloria was wearing a dark, rather mannish suit. She had the official black box of documents – orders, regulations, correspondence, carbons and even maps. She was expected to produce the papers Bret needed about two minutes before he knew he needed them. By some miracle, she managed this.
The conference room was all exactly as I remembered it, except that someone had removed the big silver-plated cigarette box that used to be on the table, and all the glass ashtrays too. I remembered that silver box well. Like most other employees, I had often used the need for a smoke as an excuse to defer answering a question, and gone rummaging into that box for as long as possible. I felt sure Bret had banned smoking from the room. Bret was a puritan. When he gave up smoking the whole world had to get in line behind him. When he closed his eyes it was night. Bret was an autocratic do-gooder; a liberal tyrant; a crusading drop-out. The combination of opposing characteristics is what made him so American, and so difficult to understand at times.
This gathering was distinguished from meetings of lesser importance by the attendance of our Director-General, Sir Henry Clevemore. He was accompanied by ‘C’, his beloved old black Labrador which followed him everywhere. It was the only animal permitted into the building. Once, long ago, a German visitor described Sir Henry as looking like a punch-drunk prize-fighter. The venerable face, long hair and dark complexion easily misled any casual foreign observer. But no one with first-hand experience of the British class system would mistake Sir Henry for anything but what he was: a pre-eminent member of the British establishment. Sir Henry’s life story could be written on a postcard: Eton, the Guards, White’s Club, Anglican Church, renowned horseman and foxhunting man, married into titled Scottish landowning family with Palace connections. His tall, shambling figure – and the Savile Row chalk-stripes that he made look like something from an Oxfam shop – was less often seen in the corridors of the Department since his illness the previous year. But disproving all predictions, his voice was firm and unhesitating and his eyes were quick, like his brain.
Bret had grown older too of course. But Bret was American and they knew how to keep time at bay. He was ageing the way film stars age; preserving all his coil-spring energy and menace. Last night at midnight he looked like hell, but last night he’d been tired, the effects of his rowing machine and vitamins waning. Sitting in his big car, the harsh light of the tiny reading-lamp cross-lighting his face and bony hands, he was about to turn into a pumpkin. But today, having read the sports pages of the Herald Tribune, he was rejuvenated. I could see he was on the warpath and I feared that I was in his sights.
Contributing significant thoughts to meetings like this was not something at which I had ever excelled. I would not have been here, except that Frank Harrington was determined to hold on to th
e well-established tradition that Berlin should be represented. With Frank now in Berlin, and me temporarily in London, it seemed sensible for Frank to send me to attend in his stead. But I sat through all the exchanges and statistics without doing much more than hold up a hand in assent, and respond to familiar jokes with an occasional smile.
Bret had gone through the meeting at breakneck speed. He turned over the last page of the agenda while Dicky was still talking, and pushed on to the next and final item without pause or apology beyond saying: ‘We know all that, Dicky. We’ve been through it a dozen times.’
I could see Dicky had brought a thick bundle of notes and references, and was only into the first of them. Poor rejected Dicky. In front of the D-G too. Dicky wouldn’t like that.
Augustus Stowe, who never passed up an opportunity to rub salt into wounds, especially Dicky’s wounds, added: ‘You bring too much material to these meetings, Dicky. And a lot of it is time-wasting crap.’
Bret waved a finger aloft to the secretary. ‘I don’t want any of this on the minutes.’
‘No, Mr Rensselaer,’ she said.
‘So I think that does it …’ said Bret, leaning over his secretary’s notes and making pencilled ticks against agenda items which had not even been brought up for discussion. He looked round the table. ‘Unless there is any other business?’
With that tone of voice not even Stowe dared to have other business. Everyone could see Bret was what he called ‘loaded for bear’, and they were only too pleased to escape.
Gloria packed up and left, having given me only the briefest possible smile. I was about to follow her when Bret said: ‘Could you hold on, Bernard? Dicky too. There are a couple of things …’
He waited until the door was closed. ‘About last night: the dead man.’ He looked down at the neatly arranged contents of his document case. ‘I thought you should know that the Soviets had been dealing with that German renegade for years; at least two years.’ Bret said this like a sudden and surprise announcement. It was clearly something he wanted over and done with quickly.