Connolly said nothing. Time passed; perhaps a minute. Then Ingle got up with a regretful sigh and gestured Connolly towards the door. Connolly shook his head.
“OK,” he said.
Ingle sat down again, his knees up around his chin. One of the seams on the pullover was coming undone, the wool beginning to unpick itself. In a couple of days, the thing would be in pieces. Ingle stifled a yawn, holding the cigar at arm’s length, contemplating the end through narrowed eyes.
“Your name’s Connolly,” he suggested. “You live in Belfast.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re friends with matey back there. Mr Leeson.”
“Yes.”
“Mr Leeson’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“Murdered.”
“So I gather.”
“Yes.” Ingle nodded. Then he looked up. “You kip with him a lot?”
“I don’t have to answer that.”
“You’re right.” Ingle smiled. “Shall I show you the records from the clinic? We’ve got them …’ he paused. “Upstairs.”
There was a long silence, then Ingle began to talk again, musing, the flat South London voice, reflective. “Bad prospect, Mr Leeson. Couple of years. Couple of months. Who knows?” He paused again, and looked at Connolly. “Did he tell you? As a matter of interest?”
“Tell me what?”
“That he had this pox of his? That he might have given it to you?”
Connolly looked at him, frowning, trying to work out the drift of his questions, the traps he was baiting, what he really meant.
“Is it an offence,” he said, “being ill?”
“Not at all,” Ingle grinned. “But that’s not the point.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. You’re right. Getting poxed isn’t an offence. But it might be a motive.”
“Motive?”
“Yeah …” He inhaled a lungful of cigar smoke and expelled it in a long thin stream. “Think about it. You’re with him for a while. You like him. You don’t like him. Either way, it makes no difference. You fuck around together, and he’s got some dreadful disease. That means you’ve probably got it too. That’s all you need to know …” he looked up, “isn’t it?”
“To do what?” Connolly said.
“Kill him.”
Connolly gazed at him. The pain in his head was getting worse. “That’s absurd,” he said.
Ingle shrugged. “I’m a simple man. I read comic books. Detective stories. I know about motive. Opportunity.” He smiled again. “So do the blokes on the jury.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Yeah?”
Ingle got up and crossed the cell, dropping the remains of the cigar into the lavatory. Then he turned round, his back to the window, his face nearly invisible. “Actually, I’m being kind,” he said. “Most juries hate faggots. They think they’re at it all the time. Bitching and screwing and tearing each other’s eyes out. Goes with the plot, doesn’t it? You standing there, bits of your lover all over the fridge …”
Connolly blinked, trying to keep up. “So where’s the gun?” he said. “What am I supposed to have done with the gun?”
Ingle nodded slowly. “Ah …” he said, “the gun.”
There was a long silence. Connolly shook his head.
“I didn’t kill him.”
“So you say.”
Connolly turned away and sat on the wooden boards. Ingle didn’t move. Dimly, Connolly began to detect a pattern in the questions, some faint glimmer of sense. He wasn’t, after all, about to be arrested. Nor, with luck, was he in for any more violence. No, it was something more complex. Something infinitely nastier.
“What do you want?” he said dully.
Ingle didn’t say anything for a moment. Connolly heard the rattle of matches as he lit another cigar.
“I want you to go back to Belfast,” Ingle said at last, “and I want you to tell me what happens.”
“Nothing’ll happen. I’ve got a job there. I’m working most of the time.”
Ingle shrugged.
“Then we’ll have a quiet old life,” he said.
“You think something will happen?”
“Yes. To be candid.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. That’s why we’re here.” He paused and produced a small notepad and a pen. He scribbled a number and gave it to Connolly. Connolly glanced at it. Seven digits. He looked up.
“That’s a local number,” he said, “Belfast.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll be there?”
He nodded. “On that number,” he paused again, “there’ll be a series of places we can meet. The first’ll be the Central Station. Upstairs. Outside the Whistle Stop bar. Can you remember that?”
“Upstairs,” Connolly repeated, “outside the Whistle Stop bar.”
“Right.”
There was another long silence. Connolly began to frown. He looked at the piece of paper Ingle had given him, the phone number.
“What does that make me?” he said. “If something does happen?”
Ingle put an arm on his shoulder, a surprisingly light touch. He was smiling again, the daylight back on his face, the big flat Slavic features, the cigar in the corner of his mouth.
“A tout,” he said cheerfully.
Connolly nodded, remembering a hundred Belfast headlines.
“Touts die,” he said, “all the time.”
“So did Leeson’s American chum.” He smiled. “According to the files I’ve seen.”
“Thanks.”
“Pleasure.”
Ingle stepped back, towards the door. Connolly stopped him.
“And Leeson,” he said, “what about Leeson?”
Ingle frowned a moment, removing his cigar, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, a gesture of perplexity or faint regret. “Mr Leeson …” he said finally, “is now the subject of a murder investigation. Should there be any progress in the investigation, I imagine you’ll be the first to know.” He shepherded Connolly towards the door, and drew it shut behind them. “Fair enough?” he said, heading for the stairs.
*
Scullen got the cutting from the Southampton paper in the post. It had been forwarded from Dublin. Pinned to it was a terse note from whoever had sent it on. The Army Council Secretariat, it implied, was not a branch of the Post Office.
Scullen read the note and dropped it in the bin. Then he unfolded the article. The brief covering letter fell out and he opened it, recognizing at once the careful script. He read the letter, remembering the girl in the purple jeans and the black fingernails. She’d been German, a student. Her name was Eva. She’d had a tiny bedsit up near the University. She’d been ultra-left, and she’d been reading philosophy, and she cooked truly terrible omelettes.
She’d come to them through Dublin. She’d taken a ferry, and knocked on doors, and persisted and persisted until they’d had no choice but to take her seriously. She’d said she wanted to help. She was fluent in three languages, and she knew her way round Europe, and Operations had used her in the recces for a couple of arms runs, Belgian stuff, shipped out through Le Havre. The girl had done well. She’d learned the fundamentals at the edges of the Baader-Meinhoff group, and Dublin had been impressed, letting her closer and closer to the real action, watching her carefully, setting the usual traps, fully expecting her to be a Brit plant, gradually convinced that she was nothing of the sort.
By the time Scullen met her, she’d been fully vetted. She had genuine cover at the University, and pursued her studies with the same combative vigour she brought to everything else. Scullen had liked her, enjoyed her company. She was a very different proposition from the Volunteers he was used to. She was highly educated in the formal sense. She was strong willed, and hot tempered, and refused to defer to the usual Catholic notions of a woman’s proper place. She organized a safe house, and laid in food, and once the ASU had moved in she swopped a large handful of
used notes for – at last – a decent car.
Scullen smiled, remembering the car. It had been a Volkswagen. The lads had laughed, making the inevitable digs. They wanted a Cortina or a Vauxhall, cars they were used to. She ignored them. She told them to get on with it. She was only, ever, interested in results. To that end, she’d bend all her best efforts. If a Volkswagen could do the job better than a Brit car, then so be it. VWs worked. Nein?
The Southampton ASU, in the end, had been disbanded. Their plans for the QEII had been betrayed by a tout, and the rest of the southern strategy – the raid on the oil refinery, the car bomb outside the Tank Museum – had come to nothing. That, for Scullen, had been a matter of some regret, but not once had he blamed the girl. On the contrary, Eva’s work had been beyond reproach, and if he had a single memory of the night they’d baled out, minutes ahead of the squad cars from the special unit at Lyndhurst, it was of her face. She’d been disappointed. She’d expected more of them. In certain operational ways, they’d let her down.
He’d occasionally thought of her since, what might have happened to her. Her studies had been important to her, he knew. She wanted to go on and do a doctorate. She wanted to teach, spread the word. If high explosives wouldn’t do the job, then perhaps – after all – it would have to be books. The written word. A process of careful argument. A lifetime’s work.
Now, though, looking at the cutting from the paper, thinking of his own plans, he wasn’t so sure. He read the article carefully, then again. He read the paragraph about the husband a third time. A diver, he thought, with naval experience. He glanced at the letter again, checking Eva’s address, and he began to smile, remembering again the purple jeans, and the black fingernails, and the incessant battering the lads had taken. When the old debates had started, sitting in the safe house, a couple of glasses down, she’d put them right on every detail, every date. She never let up. Ever. Even their washing up, she’d said, was a disgrace.
There was a phone number at the top of the letter. He committed it to memory, then reached for the pile of coins he always kept in the drawer of his desk. The nearest pay phone was down the street, towards the town centre. He used it for the calls he couldn’t afford to have compromised. He paused, looking at the letter again. She’d used his name on the envelope. That was regrettable. She must have forgotten what little he’d been able to teach her about fieldcraft. He smiled. A mild rebuke, he thought, the faintest slap on the wrist.
THIRTEEN
Buddy Little was late for the appointment, something he always tried to avoid, and it made a bad mood worse.
He’d driven over from Southampton in the Jaguar, stopping at a pub en route to phone Jude with the news. “Pascale’s come through,” he told her, “he says you’re fine. He’ll take you. You’re on the list. We made it …” Jude had said she was pleased for him, for Buddy, an odd reaction, and Buddy had known at once that she was still in two minds about the whole thing, unconvinced by Pascale, by his operation, but grateful that Buddy had taken the trouble to find him. She ended the conversation by asking again about the money, and he’d told her not to worry. There’d be a way, he said, and he’d find it.
Looking at his watch, he’d rung off, more frustrated than ever, with a tiny voice at the back of his brain asking him whether it wouldn’t be simpler just to give in, to accept it all, to lay Jude down for the duration and somehow make the best of it. The response to the newspaper article had been pathetic. He’d had a couple of phone calls from mutual friends – lovely picture, such a tragedy – and four letters. Three of the letters had been expressions of sympathy, and the fourth, from a pensioner, had included a book token for £3.
Buddy had answered all four letters as best he could, and given the book token to one of the girls from the village who was helping out with the horses. He’d yet to tell Jude about the newspaper appeal, and the way it had turned out, he decided he never would. With his own savings fast disappearing, money was now a real problem. At this rate, he’d soon have to start looking for work. Unless, of course, Harry came through.
Buddy drove fast, outside lane, keeping the Jaguar above ninety, still ten minutes from Brighton, where Harry lived. Harry, he knew, was a long shot, a retired diver of fifty-eight who now ran a small company based in Shoreham. Buddy had worked for him on a number of jobs, a month here and a month there, local stuff, piers, and sewage outlets, and the odd wreck. He’d liked the man on sight, the way everyone did, the strong bony face, the shock of wild hair, the inexhaustible fund of stories. He’d built a business from hard graft and tough negotiation. He knew the diving world inside out, and he loved it with a rare passion.
More to the point, Harry was himself handicapped. An explosives accident in the fifties had blown off both his legs. He’d lost them beneath the knee, but gone back to diving with a special suit and an extra set of weights. His exploits in the water were legendary, and he still dived alongside the men he employed, checking their work, sharing the risks they took. If anyone could see the logic of getting to Pascale, of never giving up, it would be Harry.
Buddy drove into the outskirts of Brighton, following the instructions Harry had given him on the phone. He hadn’t seen the man for three or four years, but Harry had recognized his voice at once. “Little place in Portslade,” he said, “don’t be put off by the colour.”
Buddy found the address. It was a terraced house in a modest street near the docks. There were empty milk bottles outside the front door, and the paintwork around the windows was peeling. Once the house had been simple brick, like the rest of the street, but someone had since added a coating of thick stucco. The stucco was bright pink.
Buddy got out of the car and rang the bell. As he did so, he noticed a piece of paper wedged in the letter box. The paper had his name on it. He unfolded it. A handscrawled message, in pencil. “Gone swimming,” it said, “end of the road. Then left. Look for the statue of Queen Vic.”
Buddy folded the note into his pocket and got back in the car. A mile or so along the seafront, he found the statue of Queen Victoria. He parked again and got out. There was a keen wind, blowing in from the east. The sky was grey, and there were the beginnings of a big sea running down the Channel. The water looked ugly, a heavy brown flecked with white.
Buddy shivered, standing on the promenade in his jeans and sweater, remembering Harry’s daily ritual, the afternoon swim. He’d done it since he’d known the man, probably a lot longer, and he stuck to the routine regardless of the weather or the season. He was famous for it. He claimed it kept him going, opened up his blood vessels, did him good. Buddy shook his head, turning his back to the wind. Nutter, he thought.
He descended a flight of steps and tramped across the beach. Near the water’s edge was a small pile of clothes. He stood over them, recognizing Harry’s false legs, the straps at the end that buckled around his knees. They looked bizarre, lying there on the wet pebbles, half hidden by the old plaid shirt and the torn flannel trousers.
Buddy looked up. The wind was blowing even harder here, the beach more exposed, and the waves were building steadily as they rolled in, serious waves, rearing up for the final roaring lunge at the gleaming shingle. Buddy gazed out to sea, looking for Harry, wondering for a moment whether the old boy could cope with the conditions. Then he saw him, a tiny white dot about fifty yards out, Harry’s head, rising and falling. Buddy waved, and he saw Harry waving back, a cheerful lift of the arm, before the next wave rolled in and smothered him in foam.
Harry began to swim back, a long slow methodical crawl, surfing on the bigger waves until he was within reach of the beach. Buddy watched, anxious, as Harry paused, treading what little water he could, waiting for the wave that would deliver him to the beach in one piece. Finally it came, a beast, eight foot or so of towering brown water, and Harry ducked into its belly as it sucked back the remains of the wave before, and reared up, and then dumped him on the pebbles. Harry shook the water from his eyes, and began to crawl slowly up the be
ach, away from the next wave. He’d been a big man before the accident, well over six foot, powerfully built, and even now his chest and shoulders were broad and strong, compensating for the lack of legs.
Buddy walked down the beach with the towel. It was raining now, the rain cold on his face, and he draped the towel round Harry’s shoulders, much to the old man’s amusement. “Found me then,” he said.
Buddy nodded. Harry was still kneeling on the beach. He’d cut himself and there was blood running down his left thigh. He mopped his face with the towel, and dried the water from his ears. His hair was everywhere, fine and white, already blowing in the wind. Buddy watched him for a moment or two, marvelling at the man’s resilience, his total indifference to the weather, and the waves, and the hard pebbles beneath his knees.
“You’re nuts,” he said fondly, “fucking barmy.”
They went back to Harry’s place. Inside, it was a wreck. There were books everywhere, and piles of diving magazines, and a scattering of clothes, and bits and pieces of food. Harry poked at a packet of crumpets and told Buddy to light the gas fire. Buddy did so, finding the matches in one of Harry’s shoes. The gas fire roared into life, and Buddy turned round to find Harry extracting a bottle of Scotch from a drawerful of socks. He’d put his legs back on by now, and moved around the room stiffly, occasionally reaching out for support, a chairback or the corner of a cupboard. Buddy couldn’t remember him doing that before. A sign of age, he thought. Not immortal, after all.
They had toasted crumpets and mugs of whisky around the fire, Harry his old gruff self, the abrupt one-line questions, the wind-ups, the slow mischievous smile. He was pleased to see him, he told Buddy. Later, they’d go out for a proper drink. Meanwhile, they’d polish off the Scotch. Buddy nodded, eyeing the half-empty bottle, knowing what an evening with Harry meant, glad of the invitation. He’d get the business over and done. Then they’d get truly ratarsed.
He told Harry what had happened to Jude. He explained about the accident, and her paralysis, and the line the doctors were taking. Harry listened, gazing at the fire, his mug cupped in his hand.
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