Maria was arranging books on the shelf behind her desk when Langham entered the outer office.
He’d let himself in without knocking, not expecting her to be here this early, and it was obvious from her absorbed preoccupation that she hadn’t heard him come in. He paused by the door and watched her. She was standing on tiptoe to reach the top shelf with her back to him, her legs braced and her back arched; she was wearing silk stockings and a body-hugging jade green two-piece. The effect was breathtaking.
Langham cleared his throat and Maria turned. She swept a tress of dark hair from her face and gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Oh, Donald!’
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.’
She gestured to the flight of stairs that led to the top floor, where Charles had his London pied-à-terre. ‘He said he’s expecting you for breakfast.’ She peered at him. ‘But you look terrible!’
He smiled. The way she pronounced terrible – in the French manner, terr-eeble – made it sound even worse.
‘That bad? I was out last night. Had one too many. Anyway,’ he went on, hefting the manuscript, ‘here’s the latest.’
She took it, feigning collapse under its not inconsiderable weight. ‘Charles will be delighted,’ she said, with what he thought might have been a trace of sarcasm.
She dropped it on the desk with a thud. ‘Donald, have you ever written anything else? I mean, not mystery stories?’
‘Guilty.’ He held up both hands. ‘I might, if pressed, admit to a few westerns in the early days.’
She tipped her head and said, ‘But never literature?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m happy writing the Sam Brooke books. Why?’
‘Oh, no reason. It’s just that you write very well, do you know?’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘we should talk about this at some point in the future, no?’
He regarded her. Her head was still tipped prettily, and she was smiling. How to interpret the invitation? He made light of it, and laughed. ‘Are you thinking of setting up your own agency, Maria?’
She shook her head, serious. ‘And leave Charles? Perish the thought, as you English say.’
He indicated the stairs. ‘I’d better …’
She inserted herself behind the desk. ‘Ah, oui. Off you go.’
He climbed the thickly carpeted stairs to the luxurious suite of rooms on the top floor, knocked and entered. Charles was seated at a breakfast table in the bow window, and Mrs Bledsoe, who did for him, was serving a gargantuan plate piled with a full English.
She smiled at Langham as she hurried to the kitchen. ‘And the same for you, Mr Langham?’
The very idea made him feel queasy. ‘Tea and toast will be fine, thanks, Mrs Bledsoe.’
She cast him a critical eye. ‘No wonder you look as thin as a rake, if I may say so. You need feeding up, you do.’ She disappeared into the kitchen.
Langham took his place opposite Charles.
His agent speared half a kidney and held it before him. Langham winced at the noxious offal, slick with melted butter.
‘Whatever slings and arrows the world throws at us,’ Charles declaimed, ‘whatever obstacles fate tosses in our path, there is always the consolation of the humble kidney!’
He popped it in his mouth and chewed vigorously, then perched his pince-nez upon the bridge of his porcine snout and peered. ‘You look, if I might be so bold, dreadful. Have you shaved this morning, my boy?’
Langham rasped his stubbled jaw. ‘Didn’t have time.’
Charles harrumphed, as if neglecting one’s toilette was a serious breach of etiquette. He reached out for a silver teapot. ‘May I?’
He poured, and Langham took a sip of Earl Grey. ‘Ah … that’s good.’
‘Now,’ Charles said, ‘you mentioned seeing young Kenneth yesterday.’
‘That’s right.’
Charles forestalled the conveyance of a plump mushroom towards his equally plump lips. ‘And?’
‘And he’s innocent – well, innocent of the blackmail. Turns out he was threatened.’ He gave Charles a synopsis of his conversation with the boy. ‘None of which alters the situation.’
Mrs Bledsoe arrived with a rack of toast and a pot of marmalade. ‘Now eat up. And there’s more when you’ve finished that.’
Langham helped himself to a slice of toast, buttered it but forewent the marmalade.
Charles waited until Mrs Bledsoe had returned to the kitchen and closed the door behind her, then said, ‘I knew it, my boy! I knew it.’
Langham eyed him over his toast. ‘Knew what?’
‘I knew beyond doubt that Kenneth was innocent, as much a victim in this foul matter as am I.’
Langham refrained from reminding Charles of his curses directed at the boy just two days ago.
His agent was in full spate. ‘You see, it is always the downtrodden and impecunious who find themselves shat upon – I said positively shat upon – by the system.’
Langham eyed Charles warily. ‘By that I take it you’re referring to Kenneth?’
‘Do you realize how much the boy earns at that sweatshop, my boy? Three shillings a week! Is it any wonder he is forced into supplementing such a meagre stipend?’
Before Langham could enlighten Charles as to the boy’s actual wage – or at least the sum Kenneth had told him he earned – his agent went on: ‘And now that it eventuates that the poor boy is innocent of all charges, I might have second thoughts about visiting again and bestowing upon him my largesse.’
Any largesse, Langham mused upon recollection of Kenneth’s parting gesture yesterday, was unlikely to be bestowed by Charles. ‘I would have thought that once bitten …’
Charles waved this away. ‘But the poor boy needs support from someone, Donald. The poor and deprived have been neglected for too long!’
Langham sipped his tea. ‘All this talk of injustice, Charles … I never had you down as a socialist.’
Charles stopped chewing and pointed a fork at Langham. ‘You and I might have many things in common – and I am thinking here of intelligence and wit – but we are not fellow travellers. Call me an old-fashioned liberal, if you will.’
‘I will,’ Langham said, ‘but I’d be careful about going back there.’
‘But the lure, the lure …!’ He squinted at Langham. ‘You obviously fail to see the attraction?’
Langham laughed. ‘Charles, to be honest, and I don’t mean this as any form of criticism … but what I saw in Kenneth was nothing more than an ugly, underfed youth.’
‘But underfed in such a romantic way!’ Charles waved his napkin. ‘But each to his own, is my motto. I, for my part, fail to see your attraction to Maria, for instance. And on that score, when do you intend to do something about it, my boy?’
‘Do something about it? As if Maria would look twice at me.’
‘Donald, Donald … For an intelligent man, you can be remarkably dense. Maria practically drools when you enter the office.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Ask the girl out to dinner, my boy!’
Langham felt himself redden. ‘Anyway, I thought she was seeing—’
‘They went out a few times last year,’ Charles said. ‘But no more. Gideon Martin is an egotistical cad, and between you and me he is making her life a misery.’
Langham looked up. ‘How’s that?’
‘He trails her like a lovesick puppy and will not, will not, take no for an answer.’
‘Gideon Martin …’ Langham said. ‘The name rings a bell.’
‘He had a few faux literary novels published in the late forties, which went down well in Paris but failed miserably here. He’s reduced to penning travel guides and anonymous encyclopaedia entries, and hates the world for it. We are not exactly on best terms, ever since I turned down one of his efforts a few years ago.’ Charles beamed at him. ‘But the fact remains: you really should make a move and ask the dear girl to dinner.’
‘That,’ Langham said as he finished his toast, ‘is hardly what I came here to discuss. The actual point—’
‘The point? What is the point of life but the essence, the very quiddity, of our relations with our fellow man?’
‘I’m not denying that, Charles, but I’m here because you’re being blackmailed and we need to do something about it.’
‘Ah, that …’ Charles adopted a pantomime glum expression. ‘For a moment there I had almost walked out from under the shadow of that dark cloud.’
‘The simple fact is that someone, a man in his fifties, short, fat, ginger—’
‘You paint such an attractive portrait, my boy—’
‘—is blackmailing you. There are a couple of reasons he might be doing this.’
‘For the filthy lucre, presumably?’
‘Obviously. But, is he attempting to extort the money from you because you’re a rich punter? Or is it more personal?’
Charles squinted across the table. ‘Come again?’
‘What if you’re being targeted because he bears you a grudge?’
‘But my dear boy, I don’t have an enemy in the world!’
Langham shrugged. ‘I don’t imagine you have. But that doesn’t mean to say that someone might not hold something against you for whatever reason. The description of this fellow doesn’t ring any bells?’
‘Short, fat, ginger?’
‘Ginger but balding.’
Charles shuddered. ‘It brings no one of my acquaintance to mind, thank the Lord.’
‘You’re absolutely sure? No one at all? No one in publishing, perhaps?’
Charles shook his head.
Mrs Bledsoe bustled into the room and cleared away the dirty plates. ‘Will that be all, sir?’
Charles glanced at his watch. ‘My word, it’s ten o’clock already. I think the hour calls for a pot of lapsang souchong, Mrs Bledsoe.’
‘I’ll be right back with it.’
When she had left the room, Langham said, ‘Which brings us to the second letter …’
Charles made a pained face. ‘Arrived this morning, Donald, first post.’
He passed a manila envelope identical to the first, and Langham withdrew a single typed sheet of notepaper.
Dear Charles,
Having given you ample opportunity to dwell upon the content of the first letter and withdraw the monies, the time has arrived for you to make the delivery – Thursday the 10th at two p.m.
Place a hundred pounds in used five-pound notes in an envelope and bring it to the following address: 22 Earle Street, Streatham. You will find it off Streatham High Road. Number 22 is a derelict cotton mill. Enter through the main delivery door and continue until you come to an interior wall. Place the envelope on the floor and walk back out into the street without turning around.
Needless to say, if the above instructions are not carried out to the letter, the police will be in receipt of the incriminating photographs.
Langham looked up. ‘The tenth. That’s today.’
He read the note again, then replaced it in the envelope. He examined the postmark, which this time was clear and unsmudged: the letter was posted in Streatham, not that this told him much.
He passed the note back to Charles.
‘Well, my boy?’
‘I don’t see how we have any option other than to go through with the delivery.’
‘But Streatham, my boy? I’ve never been south of the river since before the war!’
Langham shook his head, smiling. ‘And most people would be more concerned about the hundred pounds.’
‘Well, there is that, too. But I don’t really see how I can go through with this.’
‘You don’t have to go through with it. I’ll make the delivery.’
‘You? But my dear boy … think of the danger! What if this person is violent?’
‘Charles, I can look after myself. I’ll be delivering a hundred pounds, after all. There would be no reason to attack the messenger, as it were.’
‘Only if you’re absolutely sure …’
‘I want to sort this mess out. If I make the delivery, I might even come across something that might help to catch the bastard.’
‘You’re a steadfast friend, Donald. Steadfast! Ah, I do believe this is the lapsang.’
Langham parked the Austin on Streatham High Road, crossed the busy street and turned down Earle Street towards the bombed-out mill. It was one thirty, half an hour before he was due to make the delivery. He had plenty of time to look around, check the place out, and perhaps even witness the arrival of the blackmailer. Though he doubted this latter possibility. If the blackmailer were experienced – or even if he had an ounce of sense in his head – he would have chosen the site so that he could approach without being seen.
He had to admit to the first flutterings of apprehension, maybe even fear. He might have left Charles with a cavalier claim that there was nothing to worry about, but that had been more to reassure his anxious agent. The fact was that he had no idea who he was dealing with – other than someone who treated male prostitutes with brutality – and who was to say that, contrary to what he’d told Charles earlier, the blackmailer might not decide to attack the messenger?
As he made his way down Earle Street he passed a row of red-brick terraced houses, abbreviated courtesy of the Luftwaffe. Exposed interior walls bore poignant reminders that the empty spaces had once housed families, with peeling wallpaper still in place, the zigzag palimpsests of vanished stairs and the outlines of fireplaces.
Five minutes later he came to the bombed-out mill. Its façade still stood, with daylight showing surreally through the rows of upper windows. To the right, a towering chimney rose defiantly. A flimsy wooden fence fronted the building, a feeble sop to public safety, decorated with old posters advertising Crystal Palace speedway, long-gone circuses and the Festival of Britain.
He looked around for a place which might afford him a vantage point of the mill’s interior. A low factory stood to the right of the mill, and to the left a bomb site, this one boasting a crater which had filled with water and sprouted attendant shrubbery like some unlikely urban oasis.
Across the road from the mill was a row of neglected back-to-backs, none of which appeared to be occupied. He approached the closest and tried the door; it swung open at his touch and he stepped inside. He was faced with fungus-infested walls, bare floorboards and a flight of broken stairs. He climbed them, stepped over a collapsed roof beam, and entered what had once been a bedroom.
From the broken window he had a good view of the mill opposite. Beyond the high, arched entrance he made out the concrete floor, pitted where cluster bombs had detonated during the Blitz. Fifty yards beyond the façade was the interior wall the blackmailer had mentioned, perhaps ten feet high and coated with scabbed whitewash.
He could not see what lay beyond the derelict mill. He looked at his watch: it was one fifty. There was no time to circumnavigate the building and check a possible rear approach. Anyway, he suspected that the blackmailer might already be in position, awaiting his arrival.
On the bomb site to the left of the mill, a gang of children played with makeshift wooden Tommy guns and half-brick grenades. Their feverish cries, and the frenzied barking of a dog, drifted to him on the warm breeze, along with the scent of red roses which wound up the drainpipe beside the window. He closed his eyes and he was back in Madagascar: the warm wind, the scent of frangipani, even the heart-thumping fear.
He opened his eyes and asked himself what he was doing in a bombed-out terraced house in south London waiting to deliver a hundred pounds to some desperate blackmailer. Oddly enough, in the fragrant, balmy evenings outside Antananarivo he’d often asked himself what he was doing there, awaiting the first shells of the night from the Vichy French.
He scanned left and right. Other than the marauding kids, there was no sign of life.
He climbed down the broken stairs, emerged into the sunlit street, and crossed the road to the mill. The timber planks in the fence were fractured in places, or entirely missing in others. He found an accommodating gap and eased himself through. The façade rose before him, dark and satanic. He passed through the high archway and paused just inside the threshold. The floor before him was an obstacle course of deep pits, tangled pipework and fallen beams. He plotted a route through the debris and set off. As he walked, he was very aware of his thudding heartbeat. He knew that in all likelihood the blackmailer was watching him. He clutched the envelope in his coat pocket, wishing he’d had the time to seek out a weapon more deadly than the flick-knife that rested beside the envelope.
He picked his way through the mess of fallen bricks and tangled electrical wiring. The interior whitewashed wall was perhaps ten yards away now, with the dark, rectangular shape of a doorway at its centre. He approached the wall and, when he was three yards away, stopped. He slowed his breathing and listened. Only the distant sound of birdsong reached him, a child’s protracted war cry, and the ever-present drone of city traffic in the background.
He reached into his pocket, placed the envelope on the ground, then stood and began walking back towards the façade.
He was beginning to breathe a little more easily when the blackmailer struck. He heard a footfall behind him and half turned, but not quickly enough to catch sight of his assailant – and not fast enough to evade the blow directed at the back of his head. The impact knocked him off his feet and he fell face down, groaning with pain. He tried to get up, force himself on to all fours, then stopped as he felt something cold being applied to the base of his skull. He heard a shout from far away … or was he drifting into unconsciousness? Blackness and blessed oblivion engulfed him.
He had the impression that he was out for minutes only, though he had no way of knowing for sure. A pain in his ribs brought him to semi-consciousness. He forced himself on to his elbows in order to alleviate the pain in his chest caused by the sharp corner of a brick. He opened his eyes and stared down at a collage of broken glass, weeds and powdered stone. He felt something poke his flank, and realized that it was this prodding which had brought him around. The blackmailer?
He heard a timid, ‘He’s still alive.’
‘Hey, mister, you OK?’
‘Watch it, he’s getting up!’
He struggled to his knees, then managed to twist around and sit down.
Perhaps a dozen dirty-kneed boys and girls surrounded him, staring with big eyes in grubby faces. They gripped wooden weapons and half-brick bombs. The bomb site army.
‘The bloke caught you a good one!’ a blond lad piped up.
Langham managed, ‘Did you … did you see him? What did he look like?’
The lad looked at his mates, then said, ‘He was too far away, and he had one of those funny hat things on.’
‘A balaclava,’ a mate provided.
A little girl said, ‘He was going to shoot you, he was, wasn’t he, Dennis?’
Another lad nodded. ‘He put a shooter to your head, just here—’ He indicated the back of his skull. ‘But I yelled, “Wot yer doin’!” and the bloke saw us and scarpered.’
The girl nodded earnestly. ‘Got away on a motorbike.’
Langham felt the back of his head. His fingers encountered a deep, painful gash and came away glutinous with blood. He inhaled, then looked around at the gallery of staring faces. ‘Any of you smoke?’
‘Why?’ the blond lad said. ‘You got any ciggies?’
He inhaled again and made out the fading aroma of cigarette smoke.
He forced himself on to his knees, then paused like a sprinter on the blocks before making a concerted effort and standing. He screwed his eyes shut, then opened them. He felt dizzy.
He reached into his trouser pocket and found a ten-shilling note. He passed it to Dennis. ‘For scaring him off,’ he said.
The lad goggled at the note. ‘Ten bob,’ he whispered, and his mates crowded around him excitedly, jostling and exclaiming, before he ran off with the rest of the gang in hot pursuit.
Langham made his way back towards the façade, pain pounding through his skull in syncopation with his heartbeat. The short walk seemed to take an age, and he realized he was favouring his right knee, which throbbed painfully.
He pushed through the timber fence and limped along the street towards Streatham High Road, then stopped. The front of his overcoat was marked with whitewash; he would attract attention if he staggered on to the high street with a filthy coat and bloodstained hands. He wiped the blood on his handkerchief, then dusted most of the whitewash from his coat. When he set off, he made a conscious effort not to sway.
By some miracle he made it back to the Austin without either arousing public alarm or falling over. He sat behind the wheel for ten minutes, then started the engine and set off.
He drove north slowly, grateful for the light traffic. His vision was only slightly blurred, and he convinced himself that the pain was abating. When he saw the red light at the last second, and halted with a squeal of brakes, he knew he wasn’t going to make it home.
He was in Chelsea, perhaps a mile from Charles’s office in Pimlico. Very well, then … he’d head there. He turned right, crawled along Royal Hospital Road, and willed himself to stay conscious long enough to reach the office.
He abandoned the car a couple of streets from the agency, his vision swimming. He pushed himself from the driving seat and staggered across the pavement. As he weaved his way west, he wondered why he was doing this … and then came to some understanding. Maria. He wanted to see Maria.
Or did he want her to see him?
What seemed like an hour later the glossy black door of the agency came into view, and with a last, supreme effort he climbed the steps, barged through the door and staggered up the stairs to the outer office.
When he pushed through the door and collapsed on to the floor, Maria screamed and ran around the desk. The last thing he recalled before passing out was the sight of her stockinged calves and her small hand as she reached out to touch his cheek.
When he came to his senses he was lying in bed in Charles’s apartment, with a bandage around his head. Charles and Maria sat beside the bed, watching him.
Charles was gripping his hand. ‘My dear boy! I knew it, I knew! I should never have let you go. I curse myself for being such an abject, pusillanimous fool!’
Langham attempted a smile and squeezed Charles’s hand.
Maria said, ‘We called a doctor, Donald. He stitched your head and said you must rest. You will be fine, but you must rest!’
Langham looked from Maria to Charles, who said, ‘I’ve told Maria everything, Donald. The whole sorry story.’ He looked abject.
Langham whispered, ‘The delivery … it was worth it.’
‘Worth it? But my boy, the beastly man almost killed you!’
Langham recalled the gun to his head and wondered if the blackmailer had really been about to pull the trigger.
‘Worth it,’ he managed, ‘because I learned two … two very important things. One, the blackmailer … he rides a motorbike, and he smokes … smokes Camel cigarettes.’
He drifted towards sleep, feeling more than wonderful, and the last thing he saw was Maria’s pretty face staring down at him, her bottom lip nipped in concern between brilliant white teeth.