Preferring for reasons best known to himself (no doubt financial) to travel like the emigrants of old by sea, Edward’s father-in-law-to-be set sail (seen off by Edward not so much to shed a parting tear as to make sure he went) from the grubby and antique shores of Fenchurch Street railway station. Though his departure now seemed so much less important the thing, once set in motion, could not be stopped because his girl’s dad had grown fond of the idea, and neither Edward nor she regretted it. The older man was in high spirits, haloed already with the aura of a tropical remittance-man; and only subdued, as Edward was much more so, by anxiety about his daughter’s critical condition: the night before, attacked by sudden pains, she had been carried off to hospital. ‘Send me a radiogram, boy,’ the father said, ‘as soon as ever they tell you what it is. And if it’s serious, even if I have to get off the ship at the first port of call – well, rely on me, I’ll face the journey back across old Biscay.’
‘I hope that won’t be necessary,’ said Edward.
‘Me, too. But note down my cabin number all the same.’
Edward reached by long habit for his little book, took it out, looked at it, and wrote the number there.
‘Well,’ said the expatriate, ‘I won’t keep you any longer: I know you’ve got to fly back to your headquarters. Well, lad, there it is. Cheerioh! All the very best! And thanks for all you’ve done for me and all you’re going to do.’
Repressing with great difficulty an overpowering desire to say, ‘Farewell, you old bastard, and whatever you do, don’t come back,’ Edward said (using the word for the first time), ‘Good-bye, Dad, and good luck.’
The men shook hands, waved and separated, and Edward made off to the underground. At the foot of the escalator he dropped the black notebook, after looking at it once again, in the litter basket there provided. As he travelled west the docile public in the carriage, massed in long-suffering wedges of impatient and resigned humanity, now seemed to him as they had often done since his suspension not the them they used to be, but us: an us he still disapproved of in so many respects and still mistrusted: a great, confused, messy, indeterminate ‘us’ in need of regulation, guidance from above and order.
He had made in the past weeks several visits to the station on routine matters concerning his three rather contradictory appeals (to resign, to get married, and against unjustified suspension), but had no longer been admitted to the inner chambers of his erstwhile protector the Detective-Sergeant. But to see him an imperative summons had now come; and so after a brief, fruitless telephone call to the hospital where his girl had just been taken, he walked up the breeze-block stairs and knocked, at exactly the appointed hour, upon the door.
Within he found the Detective-Sergeant and, now restored to health, his own Iago, the star sleuth. The Detective-Sergeant, most unusually for him, was in uniform which somehow made him look, though more official, less redoubtable. The star sleuth was in neat, expressionless plain-clothes. ‘Sit down,’ said the Detective-Sergeant.
He picked up a file, then putting on spectacles (giving him the appearance of a modern British general) he said to Edward, ‘I don’t want to see you just at present, Constable, and I dare say you don’t want to see me. Unfortunately, though, we’ve both got to. It’s about this ponce. He’s been involved in an affray in addition to being on bail on a much more serious matter. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of it yet, but as it was a quarrel between ponces I don’t suppose it very much matters either way. At all events, as he’s out on bail and subject to the jurisdiction of the courts we’ve had him put into a hospital where we can keep an eye on him, so as to be ready for him when he’s ready to face either of these charges.’
Edward and the star sleuth, neither looking at the other, preserved a silence of the kind that indicated all this had so far registered.
‘Now, as regards the poncing charge,’ said the Detective-Sergeant looking at Edward, ‘if that comes up first we’re calling you as a prosecution witness. You can refuse to appear, of course, that’s entirely up to you, but if you do I’d suggest you take counsel’s opinion as to what your own legal position might then be. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m ready to testify.’
‘Oh. You are?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve decided it’s my duty to the Force even though I have to leave it.’
‘I’m not much interested in your motives, Constable, any longer. What I’m interested in is facts. Now. If you and your colleague here are going to testify you’ll have to get together and make sure your statements correspond. We’ll be up at the Sessions, don’t forget, with defending counsel and the whole bag of legal tricks. So I want some co-operation so that you both get the whole thing absolutely crystal clear within your two minds. What I don’t want,’ the Detective-Sergeant added, putting down the dossier, ‘is any conflict of evidence that might lead to an acquittal. I do not want, in short, if you can grasp this, the Force to be made a fool of. Any questions?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very well. That’s it. You can carry on.’
The telephone rang and the Detective-Sergeant, answering, looked up angrily. ‘Constable,’ he said to Edward. ‘Did you tell them downstairs they were to put your private calls through to my office here?’
Edward got up. ‘It’s from the hospital, sir. My girl. She’s very ill.’
‘Oh. Oh, all right then. Take it.’
Edward picked up the apparatus, listened, hesitated, then said, ‘Thank you. All right, thank you,’ and put it down.
There was a short silence.
‘Bad news?’ said the Detective-Sergeant, a faint glint of a former light appearing through the thunder on his brow.
‘My girl’s had a child, stillborn, sir.’
‘Oh. Sorry, lad. Very sorry.’
The star sleuth said to Edward, ‘I hope it’s a natural miscarriage, not the other thing.’
Edward stared at him and tensed, but as he rushed the star sleuth saw him coming, and picking up a truncheon the Detective-Sergeant used as a paper-weight he cracked it on Edward’s skull between his eyes.