The Crocus List

by Gavin Lyall

"How should I know? Whatever you get with a Rover, unless somebody's pinched them."

  Maxim knew that George, essentially a countryman, was more familiar with tools and machinery than he cared to remember in his London orbit. But he could also believe that George hadn't bothered to examine the tool kit of his new car. "Well, I should be able to pick up a pair of pliers in this Bourton place you speak so highly of."

  "God Almighty."

  Maxim smiled comfortingly. "Don't worry. I'm sure Annette'll wait for you."

  "After jail, or Bourton-on-the-Water?"

  14

  They drove back out of Bourton in the gloomy, still gusty dusk, but even in that light the village, sprawled around a shallow stream criss-crossed with toy bridges, had an undeniable if rather practised charm. And even in that season it was bustling with foreign tourists in foreign-tourist hats. "They ought to be buying jars of Cotswold mud and water," George grumbled. "Shake 'em up like those snowstorm globes to remind them of their holiday in Merry England… Does it have to be tonight? I mean, we could go back in a few days and I could distract her while you…"

  It was cold feet, but probably only on behalf of the ministry, the government, the whole structure that George derided and had committed his life to. Senior civil servants just could not be caught burgling cottages; Army officers had, perhaps, a more flexible public image.

  "The picture might not still be there in a few days," Maxim said patiently. "If she's involved herself, we've tipped her off. If she guesses somebody she knows is involved-and she must know the fake cop in the picture-she could tip them off. And start covering up for them. And this evening, at least we know she's out. But I can do this by myself."

  "No, if you're in, I'm in. I started all this." That at least was an attitude that owed almost nothing to the Civil Service. Then, afraid he might have sounded gallant, George added: "Somebody's got to make sure your military instinct for loot doesn't take over."

  Working on George's local knowledge-his father's home was less than an hour's drive away-they planned to reach Miss Tuckey's cottage at half past eight, when the other committee members would have had time to digest and drive in from the countryside. "These committeesdon't have the local roadsweeper on them. Did you get all the kit for your nefarious trade?"

  "I think so. And a better camera than I'd expected." It was a 35mm affair, even if a rather simplified one, with a built-in flash. There had even been a cassette of fairly slow black-and-white film.

  They had one drink-Maxim had never seen anyone order a triple Scotch before-and went on to eat at a roadsidecafé. It had a bright plastic deep-fried atmosphere and menu but the alternative, as Maxim had pointed out, was a long slow dinner at some hotel where they would have made themselves conspicuous by not, repeat not, ordering a couple of bottles of wine.

  "The Reznichenko Memorandum," he asked cautiously. "Is there anything I could be told about it?"

  George thought, shrugged, and said: "Sprague told me in deepest confidence, but…, It's a fake, all right. Five was tailing Ettington that night and he never met Reznichenko."

  "Well, if Security's in on that, couldn't they be finding the same pattern that you have?"

  "The Old Guard there, they might-but their new D-G's told them to lay off organisations like the Peace Crusade, so how can they admit they've found a pattern? That's why the only person they dared talk to was Sprague. So I wouldn't hold your breath for them to move."

  "Well, there's still us."

  "So it would seem. You're eating that stuff as if it werefood." He was staring at Maxim's plate with real puzzlement; his own was still half-full. Roadside diners were not George's environment.

  Back in the car, Maxim said: "I don't think I've ever heard you make anything but complaints about food. The Whitehall canteens, your clubs, any restaurants we've been in…"

  "You've never heard me complain about Annette's cooking."

  "I've never heard you say anything nice about it."

  "Well, she knows it's good. How are you-we-going to do this?"

  "The front door's a Banham lock, I don't fancy my chances with that, but the kitchen door's just an ordinary job and a couple of bolts. She doesn't use the top one, it's jammed with paint, and I loosened the saddle on the other when I was pretending to have a piss. You know," he added thoughtfully, "if she's keeping any secrets in that place, she's not trying very hard, with a back-door lock like that. It should be easy."

  "I'm glad more people don't take that view."

  "Have you ever been burgled?"

  "Not in Albany, but in Hertfordshire, yes."

  "Did they pick their way in neatly?"

  "The devil they did, they broke about every-"

  "Exactly. If you're going to strip a house anyway, why do a neat job on the lock first? Lock-picking's almost entirely an intelligence trade by now. Can you pull in at the next lay-by?"

  They stopped on a straight stretch of upland road, blatantly obvious, and since there was a can of oil in the boot Maxim opened the bonnet to give them a cover story of the oil warning light having come on. The car itself, a new Rover 3500, was far from memorable in Gloucestershire; it was probably the only British saloon a local landowner would think of owning.

  He had bought three large tins of pilchards. He took off their opener keys and, with gloved thumb and a pair of heavy pliers, bent the ends with the tin-opening slot to right angles. With a small hacksaw he cut the bent ends to fractionally different lengths.

  "I could have used nails," he explained, "but if you get one thick enough it's a bugger to bend without a vice. And then you probably have to file a flat side on it: a real picklock's square-sectioned. This should give a bit more grip on the bolt. "

  "I hope this is an inborn talent and not something you learnt at the taxpayers' expense. You don't think she'll suspect something? Just by the coincidence of time: we visit her, the same evening, she's burgled."

  "The whole idea is shewon't know she's been done. I could get in far easier by just busting a window."

  "Sorry," George said humbly. "In Whitehall one getstoo reliant on the old school tie to open doors for one."

  Although it must have been over a hundred years old, the cottage was still on the edge of the village simply because there was no building land beyond it. The back garden ended at a short steep scarp falling away to a small stream crossed only by a footbridge. On the other side of the stream there was a collection of farm buildings, but they linked to a different road further down. Maxim bypassed the village completely, map-reading George up a third road above the farm and they left the car there, with perhaps a quarter-mile walk down into the valley and up again to the cottage.

  The night sky was still clouded, picking up just a hint of the glow from the street lights that silhouetted the church, trees and houses on the opposite crest. They climbed one wall, to get away from the car, and waited for their eyes and ears to tune themselves to the darkness. They heard, and then stopped hearing, the wind breathing in the trees overhead and the stream rustling in the valley. The silence grew very quiet and the occasional noises very loud, and they began to belong. Maxim touched George's arm and they moved carefully down the slope and, well upstream from the farm, stepped into the stinging cold water.

  Maxim scouted the cottage to make sure it was empty, then helped George over the corner of the dry-stone wall, where it seemed strongest, and guided him under a face-high clothes-line strung across the little lawn. The kitchen door was much younger than the cottage, with two frosted glass panels in the top half.

  He tried two of the pilchard keys in the lock and put one away immediately. He kept on with the other, probing and turning gently, feeling the movement. The Intelligence Corps instructor who had taught him the trade would have had such a lock open with one twist, but Maxim was out of practice and the lock. was old and arthritic.

  "Torch."

  George fumbled out the littlepinholetorch and watched as Maxim delicately smeared a film of shoe polish on t
heend of his key, then probed again and immediately withdrew it to study the marks on the polish. He did that several times until he had established the depth to reach the lock and bolt and, he now knew, a single spring-loaded tumbler holding it in place. Depth is half the game in lock-picking; the other half is getting enough leverage for the turn, since even a proper pick has no shaft going right through to rest on the end ward like a real key. He took out the pliers, settled the pilchard key firmly in their jaws, pushed it to a precise distance into the keyhole, and turned. For a moment he wasn't sure if the sudden give and click was the lock opening or the key breaking, but then the door almost unbalanced him by swinging open. He froze.

  But no sound came from inside the house and the lights, as he'd already checked, were all off. He eased the door right open so it wouldn't swing and slam.

  "She didn't use the bolt," he whispered. "I needn't have bothered. Take off your shoes and socks: we don't want to leave wet prints all over."

  "I'll freeze."

  "Tough. Off."

  "I remember now why I left the Army," George muttered through clenched teeth. "It was pigs of majors like you."

  They left their shoes and socks outside. Maxim shut the door behind them, then fixed the loosened bolt saddle firmly with Superglue.

  There was an unguarded wood fire flickering in the room where they had sat with Miss Tuckey, throwing deceptive shadows that stretched and shrank quickly on the walls. All the curtains were already drawn. George had wisely slipped into a pattern of complete obedience, and moved silently around the room to establish aiming points with the torch on the pictures Maxim indicated. Snooting at a slight angle to avoid the flash reflecting from the picture glass, and cheating on the film speed setting because he was so close to the wall, Maxim took three pictures of the man he had seen at the Abbey, and one of every other recent-looking group or portrait. It all went very quickly and smoothly, and he still had half the film left.

  He ran the torch over the shelves, cabinets, table drawers, but there were no more photographs and no obvious photo albums. Upstairs? It didn't seem likely: the first floor was in the roof itself, with sloping outside walls and few places to hang pictures. The tiny beam of light flickered over the telephone-and back. It was in its cradle, but the mouthpiece end looked crooked. He lifted it carefully and got no dial tone, then saw the plungers were taped down. He unscrewed the mouthpiece, which had been hastily jammed on and caught by the thread. By then he wasn't surprised at what he found.

  "What is it?" George breathed in his ear.

  Maxim said nothing. He laid the telephone and torch back on the table, then probed delicately with the end of a penknife. Inside a minute, he had the substitute microphone and its extra wires in his hand.

  "Okay," he said softly.

  "Was it being put in or taken out?"

  "Don't know. But they hadn't finished." He looked around the flickering shadows from the firelight. "I'm going upstairs."

  "Harry, let's just get out of here." He had to say it; he knew it wouldn't make any difference. Maxim put the camera down, picked up a poker from the hearth and started for the stairway.

  The stairs creaked, even where he placed his feet carefully at the wall side, and the ludicrous self-portrait of himself as a householder, properly armed with a poker, goingupstairs to hunt burglars made him stop to tauten his thoughts. He reached the top charged with a cold, dangerous instinct, as he needed.

  Street lighting seeped into the tiny landing from an open door, so at least some curtains were undrawn and he daren't use the torch. The open door might be an invitation, but he didn't want to turn his back to it. He planted one foot carefully to stop the door being swung in his face, and took a breath of air that was wrongly warm and sour. Then the door moved.

  It jerked his foot, banged his knee and was yanked back open. He jabbed the poker at chest height of a moving figure and then his eyes were stung closed with pain.

  He threw himself forward, touched and held an arm, was hit in the stomach but clung on, dropping the poker and hauling the man to him. The man clasped him, foolishly, because in Maxim's blindness contact was safest. He jerked his arms loose and reached for the head, trying to blink the searing pain from his eyes. He couldn't; in his double darkness, he had no choice. He killed the man.

  In the gasping aftermath, he had no idea of where he was, nor how much noise he had made. It must have been a lot. His blind hands found the still-open door and then there was George, very close, whispering: "Harry, what happened, are you all. right?"

  "I'm blinded. Where's a wash-basin?"

  "Christ…"

  Maxim swamped his eyes with water, time and again, dulling the pain except when he tried to see. It was better to keep his eyes closed.

  George was back at his shoulder. "How is it? What was it?"

  "Chilli powder, I think." Some of the water had stung Maxim's lips and tongue.

  "You know he's dead?"

  "Sorry. I didn't know if he was armed or… Who was he?"

  "God, I don't know. Come on, I'll help-"

  "Get his wallet. Something."

  "Harry, d'you know what they've done toher?"

  "What?"

  "She-she's dead anyway. Come on."

  "Get his wallet.".

  George had himself once been a soldier. He didn't tell himself that, since he was no longer on speaking terms with himself, he just obeyed an order and rummaged through the man's pockets as if he were checking a suit going to the cleaners'. Then swabbed the wash-basin clean, guided Maxim downstairs and found their shoes and socks, moving with a numb efficiency that abstracted him from the terrors of his imagination. The last minute had left him naked in a desert of infinite horror. He would live for ever with the torchlight glimpse of a wide-eyed corpse dribbling blood from a broken neck, and see Miss Turkey's eyes above the gag that smelled of vomit and was stained with more blood from, he had to realise, a deliberately bitten tongue…

  From the ramparts of Whitehall he had got no glimpse of such realities of the secret world, no hint from the sanitised prose of intelligence reports. And if that showed how high the ramparts were, they seemed immeasurably higher from the outside. They would never accept him back. Career, family, home-all had been ruined in a few seconds. He found himself making imploring promises to God, then retreated into hating himself, and Maxim of course.

  "Take the picture," Maxim ordered, still blind.

  "What?"

  "The photograph on the wall, the one. Take it. It won't matter now."

  What could anything matter now? And then they were in the sanctuary-however temporary-of the wide cool night.

  15

  He started the car by letting it run downhill-Maxim had insisted they park so that there would be no give-away noise of the starter-and drove steadily for several miles. Almost as steadily, he told Maxim of what had happened to Miss Tuckey.

  "Sounds as if she killed herself, then," Maxim deduced.

  "She was handcuffed…"

  "Who was the man?"

  They were out on the anonymous A40; George pulled into a lay-by and gingerly fingered through the wallet with renewed twinges of horror. There was only money and a driving licence.

  "Oldrich Praeger," he read. "Address in SW16, he must be… thirty-four," working out the age from the licence expiry date at age seventy. "Have been," he added gloomily.

  "We can get it chased up, but it's probably one they hand out to anybody about the right age when they're on the job." Having no photograph, a driving licence is thin proof of identity. "All it tells us is he must'vehad a foreign accent, for them to give him a name like that. I should have got you to photograph him," he added. George came close to retching.

  When he'd swallowed he said: "The police will find him. And then…"

  "D'you really think so?" Maxim turned his red-rimmed eyes at George, winced with pain even at the feeble car light, and shut them again. "Those boys are going to go back. They've got a lot of clearing up to
do-more than they expect, now. But the police won't find a thing unless we call them."

  "Harry-youkilled that man!"

  "I've said I was sorry-"

  "Sorry? We were there illegally, we broke in, when they find that out they'll…" But the future horror was too big for words.

  "George, they aren't going to find out a thing if we don't tip them off. Don't you see who we're up against? Your Kilo Golf Bravoes."

  The truth was that George hadn't been thinking about anything except himself. Maxim's assumption came as a relief- and a very obvious fact. He had wondered how the KGB would react to the Reznichenko Memorandum; now he saw they must have been analysing the pattern long before it had occurred to him. The Abbey would simply have stampedproven on their file.

  Maxim was well ahead in his thinking. "They must have bugged her for the same reason we went to see her: she was somebody unofficial but experienced in underground work-They'd know they were up against some British group, not the CIA. Perhaps they bugged a dozen other people as well, but they'd only hear you and me talking about naming names on her bug. It's probably one that picks up conversations in the room as well as just on the phone, but I can show it to the boys at-"

  "Harry" -impossibly, yet further darkness had dawned on the total blackness of George's conscience-"then we led them to her. We got her killed!"

  Exasperated, Maxim opened his eyes and glared through the pain. "They're killers. They had her phone. bugged before we even thought of going there-and they were never going to leave her alive once they'd started asking her questions; how could they? Just as they couldn't leave that bug in her phone. She did the one thing she could to screw them up by killing herself first. So don't waste that: make an anonymous phone call."

  George turned the ignition key, very slowly, and jumped when the engine started. "But-what will the police think happened to… him?"

  "Who cares?" Maxim sat back, closing his eyes against his ineffective tears.

  George came out of the call box sounding shaken and pensive. "I told them it was a murder and all they wantedto know was my name… Does holding a handkerchief over the mouthpiece really disguise your voice?"