Call For The Dead s-1

by John le Carré

  He could not believe that Elsa Fennan had killed her husband. Her instinct was to defend, to hoard the treasures of her life, to build about herself the symbols of normal existence. There was no aggression in her, no will but the will to preserve.

  But who could tell? What did Hesse write? "Strange to wander in the mist, each is alone. No tree knows his neighbour. Each is alone." We know nothing of one another, nothing, Smiley mused. However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing. How am I judging Elsa Fennan? I think I understand her suffering and her frightened lies, but what do I know of her? Nothing.

  Mendel was pointing at a sign-post.

  "... That's where I live. Mitcham. Not a bad spot really. Got sick of bachelor quarters. Bought a decent little semi-detached down here. For my retirement."

  "Retirement? That's a long way off."

  "Yes. Three days. That's why I got this job. Nothing to it; no complications. Give it to old Mendel, he'll muck it up."

  "Well, well. 1 expect we shall both be out of a job by Monday?"

  He drove Mendel to Scotland Yard and went on to Cambridge Circus.

  He realised as he walked into the building that everyone knew. It was the way they looked; some shade of difference in their glance, their attitude. He made straight for Maston's room. Maston's secretary was at her desk and she looked up quickly as he entered.

  "Adviser in?"

  "Yes. He's expecting you. He's alone. I should knock and go in." But Maston had opened the door and was already calling him. He was wearing a black coat and pinstripe trousers. Here goes the cabaret, thought Smiley.

  "I've been trying to get in touch with you. , Did you not receive my message?" said Maston.

  "I did, but I couldn't possibly have spoken to you."

  "I don't quite follow."

  "Well, I don't believe Fennan committed suicide — I think he was murdered. 1 couldn't say that on the telephone?"

  Maston took off his spectacles and looked at Smiley in blank astonishment.

  "Murdered? Why?"

  "Well, Fennan wrote his letter at 10.30 last night, if we are to accept the time on his letter as correct."

  "Well?"

  "Well, at 7.55 he rang up the exchange and asked to be called at 8.30 the next morning?"

  "How on earth do you know that?"

  "I was there this morning when the exchange rang. I took the call thinking it might be from the Department."

  "How can you possibly say that it was Fennan who ordered the call?"

  "I had enquiries made. The girl at the exchange knew Ferman's voice well; she was sure it was he, and that he rang at five to eight last night."

  "Ferman and the girl knew each other, did they?"

  "Good heavens no. They just exchanged pleasantries occasionally."

  "And how do you conclude from this that he was murdered?"

  "Well, I asked his wife about this call .. ?"

  "And?"

  "She lied. Said she ordered it herself. She claimed to be frightfully absent-minded — she gets the exchange to ring her occasionally, like tying a knot in a handkerchief, when she has an important appointment. And another thing — just before shooting himself he made some cocoa. He never drank it."

  Maston listened in silence. At last he smiled and got up.

  "We seem to be at cross purposes," he said. "I send you down to discover why Fennan shot himself. You come back and say he didn't.

  We're not policemen, Smiley."

  "No. I sometimes wonder what we are?"

  "Did you hear of anything that affects our position here — anything that explains his actions at all? Anything to substantiate the suicide letter?"

  Smiley hesitated before replying. He had seen it coming.

  "Yes. I understood from Mrs. Fennan that her husband was very upset after the interview." He might as well hear the whole story. "It obsessed him, he couldn't sleep after it. She had to give him a sedative. Her account of Ferman's reaction to my interview entirely substantiates the letter." He was silent for a minute, blinking rather stupidly before him. "What I am trying to say is that I don't believe her. I don't believe Fennan wrote that letter, or that he had any intention of dying." He turned to Maston. "We simply cannot dismiss the inconsistencies. Another thing," he plunged on, "I haven't had an expert comparison made but there's a similarity between the anonymous letter and Fennan's suicide note. The type looks identical. It's ridiculous I know but there it is. We must bring the police in — give them the facts."

  "Facts?" said Maston. "What facts? Suppose she did lie — she's an odd woman by all accounts, foreign, Jewish. Heaven knows the tributaries of her mind. I'm told she suffered in the war, persecuted and so forth. She may see in you the oppressor, the inquisitor. She spots you're on to something, panics and tells you the first lie that comes into her head. Does that make her a murderess?"

  "Then why did Fennan make the call? Why make himself a nightcap?"

  "Who can tell?" Maston's voice was richer now, more persuasive. "If you or I, Smiley, were ever driven to that dreadful point where we were determined to destroy ourselves, who can tell what our last thoughts on earth would be? And what of Fennan? He sees his career in ruins, his life has no meaning. Is it not conceivable that he should wish, in a moment of weakness or irresolution, to hear another human voice, feel again the warmth of human contact before he dies? Fanciful, sentimental, perhaps; but not improbable in a man so overwrought, so ob- sessed that he takes his own life."

  Smiley had to give him credit — it was a good performance and he was no match for Maston when it came to this. Abruptly he felt inside himself the rising panic of frustration beyond endurance. With panic came an uncontrollable fury with this posturing sycophant, this obscene sissy with his greying hair and his reasonable smile. Panic and fury welled up in a sudden tide, flooding his breast, suffusing his whole body. His face felt hot and red, his spectacles blurred and tears sprang to his eyes, adding to his humiliation.

  Maston went on, mercifully unaware: "You cannot expect me to suggest to the Home Secretary on this evidence that the police have reached a false conclusion; you know how tenuous our police liaison is. On the one hand we have your suspicions: that in short Fennan's behaviour last night was not consistent with the intent to die. His wife has apparently lied to you. Against that we have the opinion of trained detectives, who found nothing disturbing in the circumstances of death, and we have Mrs. Fennan's statement that her husband was upset by his interview. I'm sorry, Smiley, but there it is." There was complete silence. Smiley was slowly recovering himself, and the process left him dull and inarticulate. He peered myopically before him, his pouchy, lined face still pink, his mouth slack and stupid. Maston was waiting for him to speak, but he was tired and suddenly utterly disinterested. Without a glance at Maston he got up and walked out. He reached his own room and sat down at the desk. Mechanically he looked through his work. His in-tray contained little — some office circulars and a personal letter addressed to G. Smiley Esq., Ministry of Defence. The handwriting was unfamiliar; he opened the envelope and read the letter.

  "Dear Smiley,

  It is essential that I should lunch with you tomorrow at the Compleat Angler at Marlow. Please do your best to meet me there at one o'clock. There is something I have to tell you. Yours, Samuel Fennan."

  The letter was handwritten and dated the previous day, Tuesday, 3rd January. It had been postmarked in Whitehall at 6.00 P.M.

  He looked at it stodgily for several minutes, holding it stiffly before him and inclining his head to the left. Then he put the letter down, opened a drawer of the desk and took out a single clean sheet of paper. He wrote a brief letter of resignation to Maston, and attached Ferman's invitation with a pin. He pressed the bell for a secretary, left the letter in his out-tray and made for the lift. As usual it was stuck in the basement with the registry's tea trolley, and after a short wait he began walking downstairs. Halfway d
own he remembered that he had left his mackintosh and a few bits and pieces in his room. Never mind, he thought, they'll send them on.

  He sat in his car in the car park, staring through the drenched windscreen.

  He didn't care, he just damn well didn't care. He was surprised certainly. Surprised that he had so nearly lost control. Interviews had played a great part in Smiley's life, and he had long ago come to consider himself proof against them all: disciplinary, scholastic, medical and religious. His secretive nature detested the purpose of all interviews, their oppressive intimacy, their inescapable reality. He remembered one deliriously happy dinner with Ann at Quaglinos when he had described to her the Chameleon-Armadillo system for beating the interviewer.

  They had dined by candlelight; white skin and pearls — they were drinking brandy — Ann's eyes wide and moist, only for him; Smiley playing the lover and doing it wonderfully well; Ann loving him and thrilled by their harmony.

  "... and so I learned first to be a chameleon?"

  "You mean you sat there burping, you rude toad?"

  "No, it's a matter of colour. Chameleons change colour?"

  "Of course they change colour. They sit on green leaves and go green. Did you go green, toad?"

  His fingers ran lightly over the tips of hers.

  "Listen, minx, while I explain the Smiley Chameleon-Armadillo technique for the impertinent interviewer." Her face was very close to his and she adored him with her eyes.

  "The technique is based on the theory that the interviewer, loving no one so well as himself, will be attracted by his own image. You therefore assume the exact social, temperamental, political and intellectual colour of your inquisitor ?"

  "Pompous toad. But intelligent lover?"

  "Silence. Sometimes this method founders against the idiocy or ill-disposition of the inquisitor. If so, become an armadillo."

  "And wear linear belts, toad?"

  "No, place him in a position so incongruous that you are superior to him. I was prepared for confirmation by a retired bishop. I was his whole flock, and received on one half holiday sufficient guidance for a diocese. But by contemplating the bishop's face, and imagining that under my gaze it became covered in thick fur, I maintained the ascendancy. From then on the skill grew. I could turn him into an ape, get him stuck in sash windows, send him naked to Masonic banquets, condemn him, like the serpent, to go about on his belly .."

  "Wicked lover-toad."

  And so it had been. But in his recent interviews with Maston the power of detachment had left him; he was getting too involved. When Maston made the first moves, Smiley had been too tired and disgusted to compete. He supposed Elsa Ferman had killed her husband, that she had some good reason and it just did not bother him any more. The problem no longer existed; suspicion, experience, perception, common sense — for Maston these were not the organs of fact. Paper was fact, Ministers were fact, Home Secretaries were hard fact. The Department did not concern itself with the vague impressions of a single officer when they conflicted with policy.

  Smiley was tired, deeply, heavily tired. He drove slowly homewards. Dinner out tonight. Something rather special. It was only lunchtime now — he would spend the afternoon pursuing Olearius across the Russian continent on his Hansa voyage. Then dinner at Quaglinos, and a solitary toast to the successful murderer, to Elsa perhaps, in gratitude for ending the career of George Smiley with the life of Sam Fennan.

  He remembered to collect his laundry in Sloane Street, and finally turned into Bywater Street , finding a parking space about thr.ee houses down from his own. He got out carrying the brown paper parcel of laundry, locked the car laboriously and walked all round it from habit, testing the handles. A thin rain was still falling. It annoyed him that someone had parked outside his house again. Thank goodness Mrs. Chapel had closed his bedroom window, otherwise the rain would have . . .

  He was suddenly alert. Something had moved in the drawing-room. A light, a shadow, a human form; something, he was certain. Was it sight or instinct? Was it the latent skill of his own tradecraft which informed him? Some fine sense or nerve, some remote faculty of perception warned him now and he heeded the warning.

  Without a moment's thought he dropped his keys back into his overcoat pocket, walked up the steps to his own front door and rang the bell.

  It echoed shrilly through the house. There was a moment's silence, then came to Smiley's ears the distinct sound of footsteps approaching the door, firm and confident. A scratch of the chain, a click of the Ingersoll latch and the door was opened, swiftly, cleanly.

  Smiley had never seen him before. Tall, fair, handsome, thirty-five odd. A light grey suit, white shirt and silver tie — habille en diplomate. German or Swede. His left hand remained nonchalantly in his jacket pocket. Smiley peered at him apologetically:

  "Good afternoon. Is Mr. Smiley in, please?" The door was opened to its fullest extent. A tiny pause.

  "Yes. Won't you come in?"

  For a fraction of a second he hesitated. "No thanks. Would you please give him this?" He handed him the parcel of laundry, walked down the steps again, to his car. He knew he was still being watched. He started the car, turned and drove into Sloane Square without a glance in the direction of his house. He found a parking space in Sloane Street, pulled in and rapidly wrote in his diary seven sets of numbers. They belonged to the seven cars parked along Bywater Street.

  What should he do? Stop a policeman? Whoever he was, he was probably gone by now. Besides there were other considerations. He locked the car again and crossed the road to a telephone kiosk. He rang Scotland Yard, got through to Special Branch and asked for Inspector Mendel. But it appeared that the Inspector, having reported back to the Superintendent, had discreetly anticipated the pleasures of retirement and left for Mitcham. Smiley got his address after a good deal of prevarication, and set off once more in his car, covering three sides of a square and emerging at Albert Bridge. He had a sandwich and a large whisky at a new pub overlooking the river and a quarter of an hour later was crossing the bridge on the way to Mitcham, the rain still beating down on his inconspicuous little car. He was worried, very worried indeed.

  VI

  Tea And Sympathy

  It was still raining as he arrived. Mendel was in his garden wearing the most extraordinary hat Smiley had ever seen. It had begun life as an Anzac hat but its enormous brim hung low all the way round, so that he resembled nothing so much as a very tall mushroom. He was brooding over a tree stump, a wicked looking pickaxe poised obediently in his sinewy right hand.

  He looked at Smiley sharply for a moment, then a grin slowly crossed his thin face as he extended his hand.

  "Trouble;" said Mendel.

  "Trouble."

  Smiley followed him up the path and into the house. Suburban and comfortable.

  "There's no fire in. the living-room — only just got back. How about a cup of tea in the kitchen?"

  They went into the kitchen. Smiley was amused to notice the extreme tidiness, the almost feminine neatness of everything about him. Only the police calendar on the wall spoilt the illusion. While Mendel put a kettle on and busied himself with cups and saucers, Smiley related dispassionately what had happened in Bywater Street. When he had finished Mendel looked at him for a long time in silence.

  "But why did he ask you in?"

  Smiley blinked and coloured a little. "That's what I wondered. It put me off my balance for a moment. It was lucky I had the parcel:'

  He took a drink of tea. "Though I don't believe he was taken in by the parcel. He may have been, but I doubt it. I doubt it very much."

  "Not taken in?"

  "Well, I wouldn't have been. Little man in a Ford delivering parcels of linen. Who could I have been? Besides, I asked for Smiley and then didn't want to see him — he must have thought that was pretty queer:"

  "But what was he after? What would he have done with you? Who did he think you were?"

  "That's just the point, that's just it, you see.
I think it was me he was waiting for, but of course he didn't expect me to ring the bell. I put him off balance. I think he wanted to kill me. That's why he asked me in: he recognised me but only just, probably from a photograph."

  Mendel looked at him in silence for a while.

  "Christ," he said.

  "Suppose I'm right," Smiley continued, "all the way. Suppose Fennan was murdered last night and I did nearly follow him this morning. Well, unlike your trade, mine doesn't normally run to a murder a day?"

  "Meaning what?"

  "I don't know. I just don't know. Perhaps before we go much further you'd check on these cars for me. They were parked in Bywater Street this morning?"

  "Why not do it yourself?"

  Smiley looked at him, puzzled, for a second. Then it dawned on him that he hadn't mentioned his resignation.

  "Sorry. I didn't tell you, did I? I resigned this morning. Just managed to get it in before I was sacked. So I'm free as air. And about as employable?"

  Mendel took the list of numbers from him and went into the hall to telephone. He returned a couple of minutes later.

  "They'll ring back in an hour," he said.

  "Come on. I'll show you round the estate.

  Know anything about bees, do you?"

  "Well, a very little, yes. I got bitten with the natural history bug at Oxford." He was going to tell Mendel how he had wrestled with Goethe's metamorphoses of plants and animals in the hope of discovering, like Faust, "what sustains the world at its inmost point." He wanted to explain why it was impossible to understand nineteenth-century Europe without a working knowledge of the naturalistic sciences, he felt earnest and full of important thoughts, and knew secretly that this was because his brain was wrestling with the day's events, that he was in a state of nervous excitement. The palms of his hands were moist.