He left early the next morning to drive to Brighton. Aubrey Catwell, No. 3, Princess Terrace. He would never be able to think of him as anything but Berners. He remembered their first meeting. He had been sitting in the American bar at the Dorchester one evening, having just wound up one of his fake property option deals, when Berners had come over to him. Fifteen years ago, Berners much younger then, with only the shadow of that crescent of baldness beginning to eat into his fair hair. Without any introduction, with only the hint of a shy apologetic smile, Berners had said right out of the blue, ‘I should guess you’re the kind of man who could put his hand on two or three thousand pounds.’
‘I might.’
‘If you were prepared to pay me ten per cent I could show you how to make a fifty per cent profit on three thousand within the next two weeks.’
‘If you could show me, I might be interested.’ Already he’d marked Berners down as a confidence trickster, some gentle, hesitant shark cruising through the rich waters of the Dorchester.
Berners knew a company, importers and exporters of chemicals, offices in the City, whose shares stood at thirty shillings. Within the week a take-over bid would be made and the company, since the directors held the majority of the shares and wanted to be taken over, would accept the bid, which would be made at forty-five shillings a share. All Raikes had to do was to buy now and sell when the shares moved up on the announcement of the bid.
Afterwards Raikes realized that Berners had been with him less than ten minutes, given him finally the name of the company and had gone, saying, ‘If you do it I’ll be here in two weeks’ time. This day, this time. If you’re not here, of course …’ It was the first time he’d seen that vague, amorphous smile and the gentle, hesitant movement of shoulders and hands expressing resignation. No names had been exchanged. Berners had picked him, trusted him, and had gone. Later he was to know how shrewd a judge of men Berners was. He could sum up their qualities in exact percentages, accepting or rejecting them with the detachment of a computer.
The next morning he checked the company. The price of their shares was low compared with their price-earnings ratio so there was no loss in buying them anyway.
Two weeks later, in the bar, he handed Berners two hundred pounds in notes.
Berners said, ‘It can’t be more than a hundred and fifty.’
Raikes said, ‘How much a week do you make now?’
Berners said, ‘Fifteen.’
‘In the offices of Allied Chemicals Ltd.?’
‘Yes.’
‘Making so little that you couldn’t afford to speculate on this yourself? What’s the point? The extra fifty is your first week’s salary with me, and I’ll also make you a partner—twenty-five per cent share. The work is congenial, interesting, but entirely unorthodox. I don’t want to know your name. I’m not going to tell you mine. Just hand me back fifty pounds if you’re not interested.’
Berners had put the two hundred into his pocket. They had had dinner together, become Berners and Frampton, and had set up their first operation together. He had never asked how Berners had got the take-over details about his company. They worked together and that was all. They knew no more about each other than was necessary for their work. But now he was going to see a man called Aubrey Catwell. He resented it because it would be like looking on the nakedness of a stranger.
Brighton. The sunlight cat-dancing on the blue sea beyond the pier. The horizon a smoky smudge marrying sea and sky. Along the oatmeal coloured stretch of shore the waves, dirty olive, foam and froth meringued, spilled themselves upon the smooth sand lick, teasing at the plastic containers and the dark mess of dead seaweed. Above it, topping the parade and the tamarisk- and veronica-studded gardens, was Princess Terrace, a creamy, elegant white cliff holding out its arms to the sea, the sky and the winter sun. No. 3 had little red-and-white striped metal awnings over its first-floor windows to throw shade on the narrow balconies. The door was white, flanked with black-painted curves of ironwork to mark the rise of the steps. The letterbox mouth was highly polished brass and so was the number three. Nothing of the polish had so much as touched the surrounding white paint. He rang the bell. After a long interval, a woman opened the door. She was in her sixties, black dress high about the neck, her flesh firm, her hair grey with a thin interweaving of white, and she stood on the threshold in exactly the same way as Hamilton would have stood, polite and prepared and, no matter what came, never to be shaken.
He said, ‘ If Mr Catwell is in and free, would you ask him if he would be kind enough to give Mr Frampton a few moments?’ He handed her one of his old cards.
A few moments later she was showing him into a sitting-room on the first floor. She closed the door on them and Berners turned from the window. Except for the clothes it was the same Berners, the same bald crescent, the mild and, even now, expressionless face, the faded grey eyes and the overall feeling of almost mournful gentleness. But the anonymous, ill-fitting clothes had gone. He wore a dove-grey suit, a rich claret waistcoat, a pearl-coloured tie over which the sheen of reflected sunlight in the room moved as he came forward. On his feet were brown suede shoes … Berners who had always worn black, heavy soled shoes.
Berners said, ‘I’ve just opened a bottle of hock, which I usually do at this time of day if the weather’s bright. Angers will be glad if you share it. She thinks a bottle is too much for me alone.’ It was the same voice, but the arrangement of words, their cadence, and his control over them were all different.
He went to a small pie-crust side table which held a silver tray, the bottle of wine and a tall Venetian hock glass. Seeing there was only one glass he turned to a lacquered cabinet which stood on a carved gilt stand and opened it. The inside was full of the sparkle of crystal.
Raikes said, ‘I regret this very much.’
Without turning, polishing with a napkin the extra hock glass he had taken from the cabinet, Berners said, ‘Let us enjoy our wine first. And do sit down.’
Raikes, who knew a great deal about furniture from his own buying to refurnish Alverton, sat down on a shield-backed mahogany elbow chair which he was prepared to bet was Hepplewhite. The ornamental centre struts of the back were worked with a wheat-ear design. Close to the chair was a Regency mahogany drum table. Against the far wall, facing the window, was an English lacquer commode, the design on the front matching that of the cabinet which held the glasses.
Berners brought him his wine and they drank. Berners, after his first sip, made a movement of his head taking in the room. ‘You like it?’
‘Who wouldn’t?’
The chandelier hanging from the moulded ceiling was probably from Murano and old, the polychrome glass flowers throwing back the sunlight in coloured reflection on to the ceiling.
Berners nodded. ‘ True. I was brought up in a council house, and I lived in pitiful bed-sitting rooms up to a year after I met you. I always promised myself I’d have something like this … a house and furniture and decorations, all by craftsmen, by men who loved what they made. Don’t tell me that you’ve come to say I might lose it?’
‘No. But you’ve got to protect it. You and I have not quite finished working together. If I could have done it on my own, I would. But it was out of my hands. We have to protect our selves—but to do that means that two people have to be killed. Does that spoil the taste of your hock?’
Without hesitation, Berners said, ‘ Why should it? If the police were to ring the doorbell I would kill myself. So would you. If one can take one’s own life, then it is an easy step down to take the life of someone else.’ He moved away and sat in a chair by the window.
‘Before I tell you about it, if you’d like me to, I am prepared to tell you about myself, my real name and background.’
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘You may find it out … there are other people involved who do know.’
‘Then I shall find it out. But let it rest like that. Would you like to stay to lunch? I ought to let Angers know.’
‘No. It won’t take long. What about Angers?’
‘I got her from an agency five years ago. She’s been in service all her life. She’s honest, loyal and sometimes belligerent on my behalf. She knows nothing about Berners, only her Mr Catwell. Help yourself to more hock when you want to.’
Raikes began to tell him the Sarling story, the story of the red ballpoint mark alongside a spinning rod in a catalogue, the business of the raid on the depot … everything, his relationship with Belle and why she had to be used, and Berners sat and listened, asking no questions … sat just as he used to in the old days when Raikes had worked out a new proposition and put it to him, listening, no questions, until everything was laid before him.
When Raikes had finished, Berners sat thinking for a moment or two. Finally he said, ‘First things first. What about this Army depot affair?’
‘I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll meet you in the flat on the day. Before then there are a few things I want you to get me. Here is a list.’ Raikes handed him some notes he had made.
Berners read them slowly, then nodded. ‘There is no trouble there. You can put me in the picture when I let you have them.’ He put the list in his pocket. ‘What’s your reading of Sarling?’
Raikes stood up. ‘I think he’s quietly mad. When he unfolds his big plan I’m willing to bet it’ll be some cockeyed, hair-raising scheme that doesn’t stand a hope in hell. He’s got to go. But before he goes we’ve got to have those files and the photostats.’ Raikes, moving about in the room now, stopped by a picture. It was a quiet, placid river scene in oils, a slow barge moving downstream under sail, a church tower veiled in early summer morning mist in the distance. The tranquillity in the picture, the comfort of being close to Berners again, gave him a more complete feeling of ease than he had had for days.
Berners said, ‘Delightful, isn’t it? It’s a John Varley. I bought it at a country sale two years ago.’ Then running on, the real current of his thoughts flowing smoothly away from trivia, he said, ‘I agree. He’s got to go. I’ll begin to work on him, but there’s a lot I want to know—from your end. You’ll have to get most of it from Miss Vickers. How much time have we got?’
‘I don’t know. A couple of months at the least, I’d say, from the way things are going. I couldn’t set up anything big in less.’
‘How far do you trust Miss Vickers?’
‘She’s afraid of him, and wants to be free. But she doesn’t like the thought of murder.’
‘Most people don’t.’
‘She’s going to. But that’s my job. Don’t you worry about it.’
‘I won’t. But eventually we’ve got to have a lot of basic stuff from her.’
Carefully, he went through all the things he would want to know. Meon Park. A complete layout of the house and grounds. Numbers, names and habits of staff. Sarling’s routines down there. Safety precautions, burglar alarms, location of safe. And then the same for the house in Park Street. In addition he wanted a complete list of the principal items in Sarling’s wardrobe. His preferences in shirts, ties, cravats, his eating habits, details of his health, illnesses and recurring ailments. Eccentricities. His doctor and his dentist. His office routines. Names of his principal directors, his other secretaries. Entertainments. Habits with women. Types he preferred. Did he sleep well or badly? Languages spoken, travel abroad, houses or fiats owned abroad.… Everything. For him Sarling was a big question mark, and until there was no question left to be answered, he knew that he could not be murdered. To murder a man, he had to be known, almost loved, and then guided easily into death leaving no tell-tale ripple behind. Yes, he, Berners—for with Frampton here he could not think of himself as anyone else—knew all this because murder was no stranger to him. A year before he had approached Frampton with his financial proposition, he had similarly picked a stranger in the Dorchester bar. The man had taken him back to his flat, interested, so Berners thought in the deal. There, the man had drugged him and assaulted him sexually—he, Berners, who was neither homo nor heterosexual, just nothing, neuter and contentedly egoistic—and then had thrown him out. For the violation, the diminution, no matter how slight, of self, Berners had, unknown to his attacker, studied him in detail and depth for two months. One night he had returned at the exact moment of time when all circumstances, facts known, observations taken, made murder secure. He had walked away afterwards and settled with bun, coffee and the Evening News in the nearest café, conceding himself only that vanity, ten minutes more near the presence of murder, before the ghost of the man’s last anguish went for ever from him. For Sarling, the process must be the same; Sarling, the complete man, known, loved in his mind as any study so final, so detailed had to be loved, and then Sarling made nothing, so that he could return here and inhabit paradise again.
He said, ‘When you’re sure of her, get her a Minox camera. I want photographs of everything and from all angles. Particularly of the safe at Meon and the one in London. Tell her never to take a photograph when he is in the house with her. Tell her never to carry it on her when he is about, not in bra or stocking top. He’s a man with appetites. He doesn’t want her now but at some moment the sight of her, some movement of arm or leg, some innocent exposure, might turn him on her. She must never carry it when with him.’
Raikes said, ‘I’m sorry about this. Just that bloody little red mark in the catalogue.’
‘It could have been me. A little ink tick in a Sotheby’s catalogue. The biggest betrayer in the world is a man’s mania. You never noticed our office pictures when the front had to be good?’
‘No.’
‘They were never reproductions. I’ve even got a couple of them still in this house. Given the right conjunctions, they could have been betrayers.’
Raikes gone, Berners had his lunch, lightly grilled sole and fresh spinach—no canned or frozen vegetables were used in the house. He ate from one of six plates of a dinner service made at the Russian Imperial factory in 1843, painted with a surrounding wreath of multi-coloured flowers and butterflies and with an exotic bird for centre-piece. He had bought the incomplete set in France three years before. He remembered, with a vividness that was almost elemental, the moment when he had turned a plate and seen through the glaze the green initial N and the surmounting Imperial crown of Nicholas the First. Caught up in a reverie, spurred by the word imperial echoing in his mind, he considered the richness there would be in having a large house (not something small and distinct, unique in its perfectly miniaturized proportions). A grand house with parkland; a small world that one could own, a house and terrain where one walked, not jostled by an aimless flow of seaside visitors, but alone across a landscape, knowing that if the landscape displeased it could be altered and reshaped. A man like Sarling could afford that. How, he wondered, was Meon Park furnished? In time he would know because some of this girl’s photographs would show it. Curious about Frampton and his fishing. How could that give a man any satisfaction? But as he thought it there was no overtrace of feeling in his mind that Frampton, through his mania, had set them this problem. Of all the people he had ever known well, and they were few, his relationship with Frampton was the least troubled, the most assured.
When he got back to the flat, Belle Vickers was out, but Sarling was sitting in a chair by the window waiting for him. He wore a starched wing collar that cut stiffly up into his neck skin, giving the impression that it helped to support his large head. The pepper-and-salt dark suit looked stiff, unflexible, the creases down his thin legs unyielding over his bony knees. The light from the window, striking the side of his face, gave the contorted flesh the colour of boiled veal.
Raikes, after they had tossed the shadow of nods at one another, said, ‘You’ve got your own key to this flat?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think you should come here?’
‘Why not? A hundred people come in and out every day. One of my directors has a flat on the top floor. Not that he uses it much. You’ve been to see Berners?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘If it spoilt his lunchtime hock he didn’t show it.’
‘You discussed getting rid of me?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And your decision?’
‘We deferred it—to our next meeting.’
Sarling laughed. ‘Let me know what you decide. Meanwhile what have you arranged about the Army depot?’
‘It’ll be done.’
‘When?’
‘I think it’s better if you don’t know. Miss Vickers will let you know when the crate is in a safe place.’
‘Very well.’
‘When you have the crate, how long will it be before you need us for the final job?’
Sarling pulled at his moustache. ‘ You have a free hand for this job and, quite rightly, you won’t tell me about it. I can’t tell you anything about your final assignment.’ He stood up and retrieved from the side of the chair a malacca cane with a silver knob.
Raikes said, ‘How did you know about this crate?’ He didn’t expect any firm reply. He was talking him out of the flat, moving to the door to open it for him.
‘It just came up in conversation once. You, of all people, would not be surprised at the indiscreet way men in authority can talk when they have been wined and dined well. Generals, brigadiers, colonels, naval captains, commanders, police commissioners, chief constables … they’re all men, and many of them have loose, flabby mouths. Not like us, Raikes. We give nothing away. How otherwise would we ensure success? Don’t tell me that part of your pleasure in your past career didn’t come from the contempt, you feel for most men and women?’ He paused in his move to the door. ‘That’s where our strength is, Raikes. In our contempt for them. Just see that Miss Vickers informs me immediately when the crate is in safe keeping.’ He contorted his face into the ugly travesty of a smile. ‘And go on hating me, Raikes. That’s how I like you … and I really mean like you … a dangerous animal that must obey the ringmaster’s whip, waiting for the one moment of inattention to fly at his throat. You really would like to kill me one day, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, I would.’ He smiled. ‘But, of course, I don’t underrate the difficulties.’
Sarling chuckled. ‘I never for one moment imagined that you would.’ Then, putting up a hand to stop Raikes from opening the door for a moment, he said, ‘Since I know you will open the crate to see what is in it, I must ask you to handle the contents with care.’
Sarling gone, Raikes dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. Dangerous animal … and Sarling the ringmaster. That’s how he saw himself … manipulating, dragooning his creatures. That’s where his pleasure was. How the hell had he got like that? Because of his face and gnomelike figure that made people turn from him? People hated the physically odd. There was something unholy about it for most of them. But none of the people who turned from Sarling could know how much he was hating in return. It had not been enough for him that in everything he had touched, industry, finance and commerce, he had dwarfed them. He wanted more than that … had to have more than that. God knew what … but it was there inside that large skull, tormenting him.
He had to get rid of Sarling. For that he needed Belle; needed to make her his creature, not Sarling’s. She was the first big fish he had to land. The thought made him smile … and memory flooded in of one of his earliest lessons of the patience, thought and stubborn will needed to land the wanted fish. It had been on the Haddeo river that ran down into the Exe near Dulverton, a river not fished much, narrow, overgrown, and the trout running small, three or four to the pound. It had been August with the water low and gin-clear. Himself at fourteen, with his father, and he had been grumbling at the poor fishing, anything of size seeing him a mile away, even a long belly-crawl to the bank giving no results. The old man had said that there were big trout, two-pounders, to be had if you knew, if you had the patience, if you were a fisherman worth calling that. Bad conditions make good fishermen. How often had he heard him say that? With the dusk coming, the old man much lower down the river, he had stood solitary for an hour behind an oak, watching a pool and then seen on the far side, deep down, the brief old gold flash of turning flank and belly. He was angry with ambition to land a big one. To prove he could do it against all the odds. Just as some men, because they were there, had to climb the big ones, so he wanted to land the big one. The fish rose once to something but he was slow to see what it was, and there was no hatch, no fly on the water, that he could imitate. The water told him nothing. The fish told him nothing. He knew that one cast, switched from around the tree, and one rejection by the trout would put the fish down. Give the bugger something big to rouse him, make the bugger think he’s only got one chance at a rare mouthful. He’d been a great one for swear words in those days. Hadn’t Hamilton tanned his ass for it more than once? He put on a White Moth, tied by his father with wings from a white barn owl, a large cream hackle, and the body white ostrich herl … a real mouthful.
It all came back to him. The gentle work out of line and then the only tactic he sensed would succeed. He’d smacked the fly down with a bang, two feet upstream of the trout, and with a jerking of the wrist had made it work, struggle on the surface, kicking like a real moth trying to escape the drag of the water film. The trout had come for it like all hell let loose, in a great rush, body arching over it, mouth drowning it and taking it down while he, still behind the tree, suddenly void of excitement or nerves, had said God Save the King slowly and then tightened, felt the hook move home, felt the trout’s power and shock pulse through the out-streaming line. Ten minutes later it was on the bank. Two pounds and a quarter. When his father had walked up, he had said to him, ‘There. I told you so.’ No more. But he had known the pride in the old man. And he had known the pride in himself. And he had learnt his lesson. If you want something from people then you must learn what it is that they want badly, wait for your moment and then give it to them, hook them in the moment of their desire and land them, often never knowing that what they had been offered was only a coloured imitation of their real want. With Belle since he needed her so much, the offer had to be of himself. All that remained was the question of timing.
The door opened behind him and Belle came in with a shopping bag. He got up smiling, took the bag from her and began to help her out of her coat.
Saturday, Four o’clock. Raikes had left in the station wagon two hours before. It was raining. Even through the windows Belle could hear the whining of tyres on the wet road outside. Belle sat by the telephone. She was nervous. She couldn’t help it. Not that she had much to do. But she was nervous, to her surprise, for Raikes moving now out there in the rain towards an enterprise that held danger for him. Though, God knows, she thought, he’d been casual about it, unconcerned as though he were merely going off to a commonplace appointment.
Behind her was this other man, Berners, introduced to her a couple of days before when she had been briefed by them both. He, too, showed no anxiety, no nerves; a quiet, almost gentle man, offering her nothing but politeness and, like Raikes, completely untouched by this thing ahead. Both of them so bloody sure of themselves.
From behind her Berners said, ‘All right. Ring now.’
She stubbed her cigarette out, clumsily, an uncrushed ember still smoking, and picked up the phone. She began to dial a long-distance call, finished, and breathed deep as the line churred away at the far end.
The noise stopped and a man’s voice said, ‘Yes, hullo?’ It was a flat, blurred, bored voice.
‘Is that the Mereworth Depot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hold on a moment, please. This is the Ministry of Defence, Whitehall. Colonel Shrimpton wants to speak to—’
‘Colonel Who?’
‘Colonel Shrimpton.’ She made it a bit curt, nervousness gone now, as it used to go in Woolworths the moment she had made up her mind what she was going to take. She added, ‘This is the office of the Master-General of the Ordnance. I’m putting you through.’
She scratched a fingernail across the perforated disc of the telephone mouth one or twice and, changing the tone of her voice, pleasant now in deference to authority, ‘You’re through now, Colonel.’
She handed the phone to Berners.
He said, ‘Mereworth Depot?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I don’t suppose Captain Kelly has arrived there yet, has he? He’s on his way down with some important supplies.’
‘No, sir. No officer of that name. Nobody at all in fact.’
‘I see. Well, look, when he arrives, give him a message will you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell him that he’s to ring me at once at Whitehall 7022. He knows the extension number. Colonel Shrimpton. The moment he arrives. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Thank you.’
He put the phone down and smiled at her. His right hand pulled gently for a second at the lobe of his ear, and he said, ‘You did it well. That’s set it in train. Whitehall. Master-General of the Ordnance. It mesmerizes them, drives all questions from their minds. Who is the Master-General of the Ordnance, anyway?’
He turned away, taking up his hat and gloves.
She said, memory coming easily to her from the simple research she had done in the purple-covered tooth Edition of Whitaker’s Almanac, ‘General Sir Charles Richardson,’ then added, God save her, trying to impress him (how childishly anxious could you get?) ‘G.C.B., C.B.E., D.S.O., A.D.C.’
Near the door, he said, ‘Your memory’s good. Now, remember—in half an hour ring again and ask for Kelly. He won’t be there. Say I’ve had to go out and give them the message for Kelly to go on to Maidstone. That will put the meringue on the pudding so they’ll swallow the whole Kelly arrival in one gulp. All right?’
She nodded.
He stopped with his hand on the door, and then said, ‘ There’s nothing to worry about … so far as he’s concerned, I mean. He knows how to look after himself. And, let’s face it, there’s something about, a uniform as the old song says. Goodbye.’
He walked out as though he were leaving the office early, business slack and home comforts calling, and Belle sat there saying to herself … Men, bloody men … These two bloody men. So damned calm and sure of themselves.
Nothing that she did or said, she saw, was going to alter them. They were going to have their way. They were going to murder Sarling as quietly, efficiently and unemotionally as they were doing this present thing.
There was no trouble. Raikes came down Wrotham Hill to the roundabout then swung left-handed on to the Gravesend road, climbing the hill, the drizzle-shrouded stretches, of Kent opening on his right. At the Vigo pub he turned left into a small lane. The Vigo, what battle was that? The navy was all around here. Rochester, Chatham, Gravesend … the Thames where, before man crammed it with his filth, the great salmon used to run so freely that London apprentices stipulated that they should be fed it only once a week. Vigo, of course. On the coast of Spain. Sacked twice by Sir Francis Drake. Oh, Drake he was a Devon man. So were his two brothers, both of them locked now in steel tombs on the seabed.
Gilpin, in battle-dress, sergeant’s stripes, was waiting in a pull-off down the road with the Land-Rover, army numbered and signed, and in the back a grey-green painted crater stencilled with its Z/93 GF1 and War Department arrows.
Gilpin gave him a grunt for greeting. Raikes climbed into the back and changed into his officer’s battle-dress, captain R. A., and they drove off, back to the Wrotham Hill roundabout and then down the A.20 to the turn-off to the Mereworth Depot.
They drove into the depot and pulled up outside the office hut and the sequence of events flowed evenly, long predicted, trouble-free because trouble only came when you were unsure of yourself, when the preparation had not been done, when your confidence in the inevitable responses of other people flagged. Captain Kelly. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Don’t know anything about this crate, but then things get balled up. And, sir, a message for you from Whitehall. Just had it. Go on to Maidstone? The frown. Annoyance. Mucking his Saturday plans up. Ah, well. The short drive up to Hut Number Five, door unlocked by the office clerk. No one else much about late on a Saturday afternoon. Weekend leave, girls call, football matches—and then the gentle neckchop cutting off the chatter putting him down and out almost, three big scarves for mouth, feet and wrists, enough to hold him long enough, and one crate deposited and another crate lifted out and into the Land-Rover and Captain Kelly and his sergeant driving unhurried out of the depot, and not a word between them as they made their way back to the waiting station wagon, windscreen wipers moaning, arthritic against the drizzle, the operation over, only the credits now to come up on the screen, direction and planning by Raikes, uniforms by Berners, Land-Rover and false crate by Gilpin, extra dialogue by Miss Vickers … and not a single fingerprint on the crate at Mereworth or Land-Rover to be abandoned here because both of them had worn gloves and—if Gilpin hadn’t taken the same precautions while he worked on crate and car at his garage then he, Raikes, had misjudged Gilpin which he knew he had not as certainly as he knew that Gilpin had not yet finished with him because Gilpin was Gilpin and had to do what was in his nature.
In the empty lane they dismounted and Raikes went to the back of the Land-Rover to unbuckle curtains and get the crate out. Gilpin came round to help, sergeant’s stripes bright with pipe clay, blouse partly undone, showing khaki shirt, khaki tie, grease-marked on the knot—a nice touch from Berners.
Gilpin said, ‘ Worked like a bloody charm.’ He stepped round, putting himself on the hedge side of the road, reaching up with his left hand to help with the curtain buckles and slipping his right hand into the opening of his battle-dress blouse. Raikes knew that the man had been waiting days for this moment. He turned quickly and grabbed at Gilpin’s hand as it came out of the blouse, clamping his fingers hard on the wrist and in one ferocious movement shaking the gun free.
‘Sod you!’
Gilpin twisted, kicked out and caught his knee and then threw his weight at him. Raikes went down, off balance, on the wet ground, crouching, fingertips touching the soft, wet grass. Gilpin’s boot flashed out, scoring brutally across his cheek.
Raikes, angered, disgusted that he should have given even this slight advantage, came up knowing that, if it would have served, he could murder him here and now, but knowing that the limits of need were narrower, easily maintained. He caught Gilpin across the neck with the edge of his right hand, staggered him, and whipped his knee into the bulky forward leaning body, winding, driving the man back into the hedge. He sprawled, flattening the nettles, wet leaves scattered on the battle-dress shoulders.
Raikes picked up the gun and put it in his pocket. He could feel blood on his face, pain in his knee. Anger was gone.
He said, ‘Don’t try anything else, or I might just kill you. Come and help.’
Gilpin got up, coughing, half-retching at the pain in his stomach.
They carried the crate to the car, sliding it through the back doors, across the metal runners of the floor.
‘Put that blanket over it.’
Raikes stepped back, watching Gilpin drape the crate with the blanket that lay in the back of the car.
He went back to the Land-Rover, gloved still, and checked through it. He came back with Gilpin’s small suitcase of civilian clothes and his own and tossed them into the car.
Gilpin at his side, he drove on down the side road, bore right and went on through the lanes, the map study clear in his mind, knowing exactly at what point he would come back on to the main A.20, cross it and then by other side roads move deep into the outreaching maze of south London suburbs.
He stopped halfway down a hill by the side of a small pond, wound down the window, and took the gun from his pocket.
‘Nobody can trace this to you?’
‘No. Think I’m daft?’
‘Just now and again you’re not far off it.’ He tossed the gun into the duckweed water. ‘Start changing.’
They both changed into their civilian clothes behind some bushes on the far side of the pond, Gilpin finishing with a fidget of his fingers at a blue-and-white-spotted bow tie. Raikes made him go ten yards into a field, tear a soft wound into the side of a this year’s haystack, push the uniforms in and then seal the wound. He came back, mud squelching under his boots.
Driving on, Raikes said, ‘Killing me would have done you no good. Little fleas have bigger fleas upon their backs to bite ’em. You’ll have signed your own warrant. Didn’t you know that?’
‘All I know is it would have been good to do it.’
Raikes dabbed his face with his handkerchief. ‘You’ve got a nice business. The life you want. Nobody’s going to come and disturb you.’
‘Well.…’ Then, the accolade clear in his voice, ungrudging admiration: ‘ How the hell did you know?’
‘You’ve been flying all the signals. I’m letting you out at Camberwell.’ He smiled, forgiveness not offered but insisted upon. ‘What alibi did you fix with your wife?’
‘I’m meeting her at the Chandos, corner of Saint Martin’s Lane. We’ve been to the cinema. Then dinner at a Jo Lyons and home. Watertight.’
Before he let him out at Camberwell, Raikes said, ‘ Your money’s in the pocket in front of you.’
Gilpin opened the dash pocket and took out the thick envelope. Without opening it, he said, ‘Five hundred, plus the charge for the Land-Rover and odds and ends?’
‘Nine hundred altogether. Enough?’
‘Yes. I got the Land-Rover at a car auction, Leicester way. No one could trace it.’
‘I never worried. That was your neck.’
When he let him out in a side street, the drizzle gold-beaded now from street lights, Gilpin leaned through the window, half offered a hand, then withdrew it, and said, ‘Sorry for the nonsense, guv. You’re all right.’
He went, tugging up raincoat collar, down the pavement, paused at a corner, turned, raised a hand, then disappeared, plunging into memory.
Thirty-five minutes later Raikes drove the car into the garage off the Edgware Road. He shut and locked the door and manhandled the crate out of the back of the car. Already with Gilpin he had, been surprised how light it was. He lowered the trap ladder, then taking the crate by one of the rope handles at the end he pulled it up the outer ladder runners to the loft. The lid was held by two big knock-away spring clasps at each end. He hit them free and opened the crate. The thing was packed with sawdust. He scraped some away, then groped with his hands inside. It came up with a small brown plastic canister that fitted neatly into the hand. He felt around. There were more of them, all the same. He put one in his pocket, then closed the lid on the others.
In the Edgware Road he caught a taxi and rode it as far as Berkeley Square. From there he walked to the flat.
Belle wasn’t in. He knew she wouldn’t be. He had passed her on the corner of the street as he had turned down to the garage. She would be in there now with a cloth, polishing, cleaning the interior of the car free of all prints. By now, gloved, she could even be driving it back to the car hire firm which stayed open until midnight on a Saturday—cutting off that section of life, false hire name and address, nothing to trace the car back to them even if some wet afternoon country stroller had happened to notice it in
conjunction with the Land-Rover and had memorized the number. He locked the canister in the safe, then mixed himself a whisky
and soda. He sat for half an hour, drinking. Then he went into the
bathroom, stripped and lay soaking. The cut on his face had dried
up, but the steam and water started the bleeding again.
He heard her come in and move around the room outside.
He called, ‘ Belle?’ It was a hell of a name, but he gave it warmth.
This was how it had to be. Feel it, not act it. It was a good name,
Belle. Beautiful, full of promise.
She said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. No hitch. Did you get rid of the car?’
‘Yes. I suppose you’d like me to get another—tomorrow or
Monday?’
Suppose nothing. Stop supposing.
‘Monday. Have a drink. I’m two ahead of you.’ He lay, picturing
her at the sideboard. Belle was beautiful. Her body, all of her; the
long Burne-Jones face and the stupid hair, the supposes and the
nervousness. They were all beautiful, desirable, because he had to
have her.
He stepped out of the bath, and began to towel himself. The
blood from his face stained the towel. Still half wet he searched
the cabinet for sticking plaster and couldn’t find any.
He called, ‘Belle.’
She came into the bedroom.
‘Yes?’
‘Could you find some sticking plaster? I’ve cut my face.’
She didn’t answer but he heard her move away and after a
moment or two she was back.
‘You want it in there?’
‘Please. You can fix it for me.’
The door opened and she came in.
He sat on the bath stool, the towel draped across his thighs.
She stood there, in her black dress, the pearls she had worn the
first time he saw her tight about her throat, immobile, one hand holding up a tin of Band-Aid as though it were a cross, a holy, unbreakable guard between her and evil.
He cocked his head sideways so that she could see the cut.
‘Be an angel and fix it for me.’
She came over and avoided his eyes as she opened the tin and selected a plaster. She put the tin down on the side of the bath.
He saw the little over-frown of concentration as she half-peeled the protective cover from the plaster strip.
He said, knowing that she would know that he was not telling the truth, but that it was conventional and would be what she would expect of a man like him. ‘I got it on the side of the loft dragging the case up.’
She nodded, and bent, beginning to fix the plaster on his cheek, her long fingers, firm, expert in the woman’s work. As she did so, he put his hands forward and up under the hem of her dress and held her thighs, his hands sliding over the top of her stockings on to the warm, bare flesh. He felt a slow, involuntary tremble of her body, a slender birch taking the first pulse of a rising breeze. She said nothing, her breath against his ear, her fingers smoothing the plaster home.
Standing away from him she said throatily, ‘That all right?’
‘Yes, fine. Thank you.’
She looked down at his knees and made a mouth, twisting the dark red bow. ‘What about your knee?’
His right knee was heavily bruised from Gilpin’s kick. ‘I must have knocked that, too. I bruise easily.’
He stood up and began to finish towelling himself as he would had she been his wife and seen him naked a thousand times. She watched him for a moment and then went back into the bedroom.
When he came out of his bedroom, dressed, she was sitting, drink at her side, reading an Evening Standard.
He said, ‘ Do you think we could have some home cooking tonight? I’d rather not go out with this.’ He touched the plaster.
‘There’s steak—and a cauliflower.’
‘Fine. What did old Fu Manchu provide in the way of wine?’
He bent and opened the sideboard door and over his shoulder said, ‘By the way, you can tell him that it all went off all right.’
‘He’s in Malta until Monday.’
‘When he comes back.’
He began to whistle gently as he looked over the bottles of wine.
She lay in bed, Raikes sleeping at her side.
From the moment that she had gone into the bathroom with the plaster, seeing him naked, feeling his hands on her thighs, she had known that she was helpless. What he wanted, she had wanted, despite herself. (You say to yourself that you won’t—and then you do. What bloody sense was there in that?) If it had just been him, naked, the sex and their two bodies and nothing beyond that, then she would have felt neither helpless nor afraid. (She knew damned well that he was setting out to use her … and she didn’t want to be used. With her body, yes … but not this other thing which was coming. And yet … did it matter so much? Being Sarling’s creature wasn’t all that good. Being his would at least give her a different kind of hope.) She turned over on her back, wondering why she was struggling with herself.
They’d spent the evening comfortably, pleasantly, and not once by accident or design had he touched her; the memory of his hands on her thighs lasting, and he knowing that it would last. Two hours ago he had come to her, through the bathroom into the dark bedroom, she hearing him from the moment his door had clicked open.
He’d moved in beside her, no words spoken and his hands had touched her again, sliding under the silk of her nightdress, lingering, the slow movement of browsing animals drifting over the smooth pastures of her body.
His mouth had been warm, generous, full of wanting and giving and there was no power in her which could hold back the response of her own lips and tongue … only a faint, receding cry of warning somewhere miles behind her. He’d taken her, hard, thrusting into her, thrusting his will into her, claiming her, possessing her and she had met it all with an instinctive, matching brutality, tearing at the muscular sweep of his back, rising to meet him, spreading herself for him, feeling herself ridden, swept away, not caring, dying into darkness, spent and not spent because from that darkness he had brought her back again and spurred her on to another death, and another, until body, mind and all time were spent and she lay empty. Then, knowing she had no power to be anything but what he wanted, he had filled her with himself, his passion of possession, and the knowledge that whatever he would ask she would do, whatever he wanted her to be she would be … Knowing it, she had drifted into sleep only to wake now to feel the warmth of him still alongside her, one arm and hand limp across the nakedness of her breasts, fingers cupped even in sleep with a mild, possessive firmness over her flesh, the dry heat of his palm moving into her hard nipple, into her, claiming a union that she needed and welcomed.
The hand on her breast moved down, found the placid, gentle roundness of her stomach, fingers spread and drifted lower and she knew that he was now awake and knew that she, too, was awake. He turned, pulling her gently to him, the possessive hand and arm moving, the hand taking her right knee, sliding her leg across him. The need he had for her matched her movements of the need she had for him, and then magically, unheralded, he was in her, proud now, but gentle, and it was nothing like the other had been. She felt herself blossom to a warm, wet-petalled flowering, like nothing before and, drifting away into the long hungry spasm of abandon, she felt him come with her, following her, loving her.…
He had been going down to Devon the next day, Sunday, but he stayed with her. He slept with her again that night and there was tenderness and hardness in him and she gave herself to both, wanting both, and knew that she was in love with him, knew that it could lead nowhere but was content to crest with it from moment to moment. Limp and lazy with their fill of passion, she waited for him to speak, but he said nothing, turning to her, cradling her to him and slept.