Single & Single

by John le Carré

“Not in the least, Ollie”—defensive now—“not by any means. Nothing illegal or irregular about it whatever. Except it appears that Messrs. Dorkin & Woolley haven’t met Mr. Crouch either, you see. Well, that’s not unknown, I suppose.” He considered the semantic point. “It’s irregular, perhaps, but it’s not unknown. He’s very reclusive, I must say, is your Mr. Crouch.”

  “He’s not my Mr. Crouch. He’s Carmen’s.”

  “Indeed he is. And her trustee as well, I see.”

  Toogood was again taking umbrage. “Why shouldn’t Crouch be a trustee?” he demanded, much aggrieved, of the two men from London together. “Crouch provided the cash. He’s the settlor. A friend of the family, part of the Hawthorne tapestry. Why shouldn’t he want to make sure Carmen’s money is handled in a proper manner? Why shouldn’t he be reclusive if he wants to be? I’ll be reclusive one day. When I’m retired.”

  Lanxon, the heavy fellow, had decided to return to the charge. Propped on one lumpy elbow, he leaned massively over the table, pipe in hand and wire-wool forelock leading, every inch our security officer. “So, acting on Mr. Crouch’s advice,” he said, half closing his eyes for extra shrewdness, “you open the Carmen Hawthorne Trust with yourself and Mr. Crouch and Arthur here as trustees and you pay in five hundred pounds of start money. Two weeks later this sum is increased by a further one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, thanks to the generosity of Mr. Crouch. Yes?” He had quickened the pace.

  “Yes.”

  “Did Crouch pay out any other monies to your family, that you’re aware of?”

  “No.”

  “No, he didn’t? Or no, you’re not aware of them?”

  “I haven’t got any family. My parents are dead. I’ve no brothers or sisters. That’s why Crouch adopted Carmen, I suppose. There was no one else.”

  “Except you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he has given you personally nothing? Directly or indirectly? You derive no benefit from Crouch?”

  “No.”

  “Never did?”

  “No.”

  “Never will—far as you know?”

  “No.”

  “Ever dealt with him, had business dealings with him, borrowed from him, even indirectly—through solicitors?”

  “No to all of it.”

  “Who paid for Heather’s house, then, Oliver?”

  “I did.”

  “What with?”

  “Cash.”

  “Out of a suitcase?”

  “Out of my bank account.”

  “And how did you accumulate this cash, if I may ask? Through Crouch, perhaps, through his associates, his shady business dealings?”

  “It was money I saved in Australia,” said Oliver gruffly, and began to color.

  “Did you pay Australian tax on your earnings during your residence there?”

  “The earnings were casual. Maybe tax was deducted at source. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know. And you kept no records, of course?” He cast a knowing sideways glance at Pode.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t fancy hitchhiking ten thousand miles with a set of records in my backpack, that’s why.”

  “No, well, I don’t suppose you would,” Lanxon conceded with another glance for Pode, not half so knowing. “So how much did you bring back from Australia to U.K. in all, Ollie? How much had you saved up, put it that way?”

  “When I’d bought the house for Heather and the furniture and the van and the equipment, that was pretty much my lot.”

  “Did you ever follow any other occupation out there in Australia at all? Never dealt in any—what I might call commodities, let us say—substances—”

  He got no further. Toogood saw to that. Toogood had taken the whole imputation on himself. Half rising from his chair, he aimed his piglet forefinger straight at Lanxon’s heart. “That’s a bloody outrage, Walter! Ollie’s my valued customer. You take that back right now.”

  Oliver stared into the middle distance while Pode and Toogood waited awkwardly for Lanxon to extricate himself, which he did by resorting to ponderous innuendo.

  “So, meanwhile,” Lanxon suggested, “it’s Ollie and Arthur in charge of the trust, it’s some funny solicitor in London rubberstamping whatever you decide to do, and it’s reclusive Mr. Crouch, who as usual nobody can find, including his solicitors, crouching out of sight in his house in Antigua, West Indies.” Oliver said nothing—just sat and watched him flail, as they all did. “Ever been there?” Lanxon demanded, louder still.

  “Where?”

  “His house. In Antigua. Where d’you think?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t expect many people have, have they? Assuming there’s a house to go to, of course.”

  “That’s a travesty, that is, Walter!” Toogood declared, now thoroughly incensed. “Crouch isn’t a rubber stamp, he’s a sound financial mind, as good as the brokers any day and sometimes better. Oliver and I agree strategy, we put it up to Crouch via his solicitors, we get his say-so. What could be more shipshape than that?” Swinging round in his chair, he appealed to Pode who was big in the bank. “All of this was reported to Head Office at the time, Reg. Legal Department looked at it; we passed it pro forma to Criminal Intelligence and never heard a peep. Trustee Department looked at it. The Revenue didn’t blink; Head Office told us well done and get on with it. And we did. Very effectively, if I may say so. Turned a hundred and fifty thousand into one nine eight in less than two years, and rising.” He swung back to Lanxon. “Nothing’s changed except the numbers. The trust’s a regional matter, to be handled locally. By Ollie here and by myself as local incumbent, which is fair and normal. It’s only the size of the money that’s altered, not the principle. The principle was established eighteen months ago.”

  Oliver slowly collected his limbs together until he sat upright. “What numbers? How have they changed?” he demanded. “What haven’t you told me? I’m Carmen’s father. I’m not just her trustee.”

  Pode took an age to answer. Or perhaps the delay was in Oliver’s mind. Perhaps Pode answered straight out, and Oliver’s mind, having recorded what Pode said, ran the tape slowly, over and again, until the monstrosity of the message had sunk in. “A very large sum of money has been paid into your daughter Carmen’s trust, Ollie. It’s so immense that the bank assumed it must be a mistake. Mistakes can happen. Institutional money misrouted in error. A couple of digits transposed. Millions of pounds ending up in some unlikely private account till we get onto the remitting bank and sort it out. But in this case the remitting bank is adamant that the right amount of money was sent to the right account. To the credit of the Carmen Hawthorne Trust. The donor anonymous because that’s what he or she wishes to be. You can’t beat down the Swiss when it comes to banking confidentiality. The law’s the law for them. The code’s the code. ‘From a customer,’ and you can sing for the rest. All they’re prepared to tell us is the money comes from a well-conducted account of long standing and they’ve every reason to be confident of the integrity of the client. From there on in, it’s a blank wall.”

  “How much?” said Oliver.

  Pode did not falter. “Five million and thirty pounds. And what we’d all like to know is, where did it come from? We’ve inquired of Crouch’s solicitors. Not from him, they say. We’ve asked them whether Mr. Crouch might otherwise be able to enlighten us regarding Carmen’s benefactor. Mr. Crouch is traveling at present, they tell us. They will advise us in due course. Well, traveling, that’s no excuse these days. So if Crouch didn’t send it, who did? And how did he or she come by it in the first place? Who wants to give your infant daughter’s trust five million and thirty pounds in cash, yet not be a trustee, not inform the trustees in advance, and not reveal his or her name? We thought you might be able to tell us, you see, Oliver. Nobody else can, apparently. You’re our one chance.”

  Pode paused to allow Oliver to speak, but Oliver had nothing to
say. He had retreated again. He was hunched inside the collar of his overcoat, long black hair swept back, wide brown eyes fixed on something distant, the tip of one large finger wedged to his lower lip. In his head he was watching clippings from the lousy film of his life so far—a flat-fronted villa on the Bosphorus, schools, all failures, a white-walled interviewing room at Heathrow airport.

  “Take your time, Ollie,” Pode urged, in the tone of someone exhorting him to repentance. “Think back. Somebody in Australia perhaps. Somebody from your past or your family’s past. A philanthropist. A rich eccentric. Another Crouch. Did you ever buy a share in a gold mine or something? Did you ever have a business partner—somebody who might have struck lucky?” No answer. Not even a sign that he was heard. “Because we need an explanation, you see, Ollie. A convincing one. Five million pounds sent anonymously from a Swiss bank, well, that’s more than certain authorities in this country are willing to swallow without a pretty good explanation.”

  “And thirty,” Oliver reminded him. And thought back. And further back, until his features acquired the solitude of a long-term prisoner. “Which bank?” he asked.

  “One of the biggest. Never mind.”

  “Which one?”

  “Cantonal & Federal of Zurich. C&F.”

  Oliver gave a distant nod, acknowledging the rightness of this. “It’s a death,” he suggested in a remote voice. “Someone’s left a will.”

  “We asked that, Ollie. I’m afraid we quite hoped it was the case. Then at least we’d have a chance of seeing documents. C&F assure us that the settlor was alive and well and in possession of his mental faculties at the time of the transfer. They rather imply that they’ve been back to him and confirmed the instruction. They don’t say it in as many words, the Swiss won’t do that. But the implication is there.”

  “Then it’s not a death,” Oliver said, for himself rather than for them.

  Yet again Lanxon sprang into the breach. “All right. Suppose it was a death. Who’s dead, then? Or who isn’t? Who’s alive now, who might be leaving Carmen five million and thirty quid on his death?”

  Gradually, while they waited, Oliver’s mood changed. It is said that when a man is sentenced to be hanged a contentment descends over him and for a while he performs all sorts of minor tasks with precision and diligence. Oliver now acquired that kind of friendly clarity. He stood up, smiled and politely excused himself. He stepped into the corridor and made his way to the men’s room, which he had observed on his passage to Toogood’s office. Inside, he locked the door and gazed into the mirror while he made an assessment of his situation. He stooped over the hand basin, turned on the cold tap and with water from his great cupped hands rinsed his face, imagining he was washing away some version of himself that was no longer operative. There being no towel he beat his hands with his handkerchief, which he then tossed into the waste bin. He returned to Toogood’s office and placed himself in the doorway, filling it with the folds of his overcoat. He spoke courteously and directly to Toogood, ignoring Pode and Lanxon.

  “I’d like to talk to you alone, please, Arthur. Outside, if that’s all right.” And he stepped back to let Toogood go ahead of him down the corridor. They stood in the backyard again, under the stars, surrounded by the high wall and the razor wire. The moon had freed itself of earthly attachments and lay luxuriously above the bank’s many chimney pots, washed by a milky haze. “I can’t accept the five million,” he said. “It’s not appropriate for a child. Send it back to where it came from.”

  “No go,” Toogood rejoined with unexpected force. “As trustee I haven’t the authority, nor have you. Nor has Crouch. It’s not up to us to say the money’s clean. It’s up to the authorities to say it’s not. If they don’t, the trust must keep it. If we refuse it, twenty or so years from now Carmen can sue the bank, sue you, me and Crouch to hell and back.”

  “Go to the courts,” Oliver said. “Ask for a ruling. Then you’re protected.”

  Startled, Toogood began to say one thing, then changed his mind and said another. “All right, we go to the courts. What have they got to work on? Hunch? You heard what Pode said. A well-conducted account, a client of integrity in full possession of his faculties. The courts will say the authorities are powerless unless they can put up a criminal case.” He took a pace backward. “Don’t look like that. What are you, anyway? What do you know about courts?”

  Oliver had moved neither feet nor body; he had his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and they stayed there. So it could only have been his bulk and the expression on his great moist face in the moonlight that had prompted Toogood to recoil so abruptly: the gathering grimness of Oliver’s hollowed eyes against the stars, the despairing anger round the mouth and jaw.

  “Tell them I don’t want to talk to them anymore,” he told Toogood, climbing into his van. “And open the gates, please, Arthur, or I’ll have to smash them down.”

  Toogood opened the gates.

  5

  The bungalow lay in a private unmade road called Avalon Way, huddled below the crest of the hill and out of sight from the town, which was one of the things that Oliver had liked about it: nobody sees us, nobody thinks about us, we’re in nobody’s consciousness except our own. Its name was Bluebell Cottage and Heather had wanted to change it, but Oliver, without giving his reasons, had overruled her. He preferred to reenter the world as it stood, to be absorbed and hidden away and forgotten. He liked the summer when the trees were in leaf and you couldn’t see the bungalow from the road. He liked the winter spells when Lookout Hill iced over and nothing went by for days. He liked the plain, boring neighbors, whose predictable conversation never threatened him or went beyond the bearable. The Andersons, in Windermere, ran a sweetshop at Chapel Cross. A week after Christmas they had given Heather a box of liqueur chocolates with holly on it. The Millers, in Swallows’ Nest, were retired. Martin, an ex-fireman, had taken up watercolors, every leaf a masterpiece. Yvonne read tarot cards for friends and was a sidesman in the church. To have their decent ordinariness on either side of him was a comfort, and to begin with he had felt the same way about Heather and her pathetic need to please everybody all the time. We’re both fragmented people, he had reasoned. If we put the fragments of ourselves together and have a baby to unite us, we’ll be fine.

  “Haven’t you got any old family photographs or anything?” she had asked him sadly. “It’s a bit one-sided, all my rotten lot and none of yours, even if your lot are dead.”

  Lost, he had explained. Left behind in my kit in Australia. But that was all he told her. It was Heather’s life he wanted, not his own. Heather’s relations, childhood, friends. Her banality, her continuity, her weaknesses, even her infidelities, which gave him a kind of absolution. He wanted everything he’d never had, at once, ready-made, backdated, warts and all. His pessimism was a gigantic impatience that required life to be set like a tea table for him by yesterday: dull friends with silly opinions, bad taste and all the commonest factors.

  Avalon Way was a hundred yards long with a turning bay and a fire hydrant at the far end. Cutting the van’s engine, Oliver coasted down the dark road and parked. From the turning bay he walked back lightly, favoring the grass verge, scanning empty cars and darkened houses because the curse of stealth was on him and so were memories of other times. He was in Swindon, where Brock had trained him in useless, furtive things. “We’re lacking concentration, son,” a kindly instructor told him. “It’s not having your heart in it is the problem. I expect you’re one of those do better on the night.” The moon hung ahead of him, making a white ladder in the sea. Sometimes when he passed a bungalow a burglar light plopped on, but the denizens of Avalon Way were frugal souls and it soon went out again. Heather’s parked Ventura, exaggerated by the moonlight, loomed vastly in the driveway. The curtains in her bedroom window were drawn shut, a light glowed behind them. She’s reading, he thought. Bodice rippers, whatever her book club sends her. Who does she think of when she reads that stuff? Howto books.
What to do when your partner tells you he doesn’t love you and never did.

  The curtains in Carmen’s window were of gauze because she needed to see stars. At the age of eighteen months she had already learned how to make her wishes known. The small tilt window at the top, open because she liked air but not a draught. Her Donald Duck night-light on the table. The tape of Peter and the Wolf to send her to sleep. He listened and heard the sea but no tape. From the darkness of a copper beech he made a survey of the garden, and everything he saw accused him. The new Wendy house, or new last summer when Oliver and Heather Hawthorne were buying everything because buying was the only language left to them. The new climbing frame with bits already missing. The new plastic children’s slide, warped. The new paddle pool, clogged with leaves, half inflated, dying where it lay. The new shed for the new mountain bikes they swore they would ride religiously every morning of their new life, with Carmen riding pillion as soon as she was big enough. The barbecue: let’s have Toby and Maud round—Toby her employer at the estate agents, with a BMW, a maniacal laugh and an espousing wink for the husbands he was cuckolding. Maud his wife. Oliver walked back along the grass verge to the van and called the number on his car phone. First he got a languid bit of Brahms, then a shriek of rock music.

  “Congratulations. You have reached Heather and Carmen Hawthorne’s ancestral pile. Hi. I’m afraid we’re having too much fun to take your call at the moment, but if you’d like to leave a message with the butler . . .”

  “I’m down the road in the van,” Oliver said. “Have you got anybody with you?”

  “No, I bloody haven’t,” she retorted.

  “Then open the door. I need to talk to you.”

  They stood facing each other in the hall under the chandelier they had bought together at architectural reclaim. The hostility between them was like a heat. Once she had loved him for making magic in the children’s ward at Christmas, for his sloppy dexterity and warmth. She had called him her gentle giant, her lord and schoolmaster. Now she was contemptuous of his size and ugliness, and kept her distance while she looked for things to hate about him. Once he had loved her failings as a precious charge upon him: she is the reality, I am the dream. Her face in the light of the chandelier was bruised and shiny.