Chapter Thirty-one

It was symptomatic, no doubt – but of precisely what? – that he should dive underground for security, as now he clattered down the steps of Hyde Park tube station. The backward look for a pursuer, the somehow furtive passage through the barrier, the quick run down the moving staircase, he had done all these or something very much like them before, and now as before nobody followed him, so that the whole tale of drugs and stolen money and Anthea’s disappearance might have been part of some fantastic dream. The suitcase in his hand, however, like some compromising prop in a farce, the pair of knickers left on a chair in the drawing room, was a reminder that the dream was reality. Should he leave the suitcase in the Underground train? Somehow he found himself unable to do so. The money was useless, no doubt, yet it seemed to be the only thing, now, that bound him to the image of Anthea as it receded into the distance. To abandon the suitcase would be to admit that the image of Anthea had never been real.

He travelled for two stations, got out at Piccadilly Circus, walked down Lower Regent Street and turned off it. The brass plate said PFC 1st Floor, but it was not this that he was looking for now. The plate he wanted was a dingy one low down on the other side of the door. It said, ‘Caretaker. Night Only. Please Press.’

Hunter pressed the bell. There was no sound within the dark building. He pressed it again, and the door opened. A little old man with a four-day growth of beard peered at him.

‘No good ringing like that. I got to come up from the basement and I have to take my time. Not so young as I was, you know.’

Which of us is, Hunter thought. Hunter tapped the suitcase. ‘I’ve got some stuff here for the PFC. They told me it would be all right if I brought it along and saw you. I’m sorry to trouble you at this time of night.’ He put his hand into his pocket, and then, when the caretaker’s look of disapproval did not change, into his wallet.

At the sight of the note the old man’s face changed as though a light had gone on inside it. ‘You’re a gentleman,’ he said with apparent deep feeling. ‘Bless you, sir, you’re a gentleman.’ What would he have said, Hunter wondered, how impossibly refulgent would his features have become, at sight of the suitcase’s contents? ‘You’d be a friend of Mr Pine, I expect. A real gentleman, Mr Pine, one of the old sort.’

‘That’s right. He has quite a few friends coming up here, I suppose.’

‘A few. I wouldn’t say a lot.’

‘And Miss Moorhouse? She comes up too, I expect.’

The little eyes peering at him were slightly suspicious now, the voice’s whine sharpened a little in tone. ‘You’ve got your key.’

If I say no he won’t let me go up, Hunter thought. ‘Yes.’

‘Shut this front door when you go out. I’d come up with you, but I got to look after the boilers.’ The caretaker shuffled away, and disappeared in the darkness of the passage. Hunter went up the stairs.

It is hardly possible to spend ten months in prison, let alone ten years, without learning how to pick simple locks. The lock of the glass entrance door was of the kind that can be opened with a thin piece of wire. Hunter managed it with the aid of two bent paper clips which he found in his pockets.

The cover was over the typewriter in the outer office. Hunter glanced at the filing cabinet, rejected it as too public a repository for secrets, and opened the door lettered in gold, Mr H A Pine. He entered a small room with a carpet, a desk, a hatstand, a cupboard. The cupboard contained stationery, pencils, a hand printing machine at which he glanced briefly. The desk, then? It was a standard type of kneehole desk in light oak, with ‘In’ and ‘Out’ trays filled with papers, a clean blotter, an engagement pad, a tube of Alka Seltzer, and a bottle containing a well-known brand of health salts guaranteed to give, as the advertisements put it, a beneficial shake-up to the whole system.

The engagement pad did not mention Anthea Moorhouse’s name, nor even her initials. The engagements listed over the past two weeks seemed to consist of occasions at which Pine had spoken, or had taken the chair. There were one or two notes like: ‘Lunch Blake 1.0. Discuss Rhodesian trip. Travers and Johnson evening. Drinks and dinner. Possibilities New Zealand development.’ He looked quickly through the papers in the trays. Arrangements for meetings, trips, discussions, answers to inquiries about the objects of the PFC. Nothing which indicated that Pine was anything but what he appeared to be, a busy man concerned with preserving the bonds of Empire. He tried the drawers of the desk. Three on each side were open, and contained what seemed to be perfectly innocent papers and memoranda. The fourth drawer on each side was locked. These drawers would have to be forced.

He tried his own pen knife, broke the blade of it, and looked round for a chisel or a screwdriver. But the PFC had apparently no chisels or screwdrivers for the assistance of burglars. He went back into the outer office and then into Rawlinson’s room, which was a slightly larger version of Pine’s. There was no chisel or screwdriver here, but in one of the cupboards he found an old file, which tapered to a point.

He tried without success to insert this file in the slight gap between the top of the desk and the locked drawer. There was a small single steel filing cabinet in the outer office, and he used this as a very inadequate hammer. At last he was able to force the file between the two pieces of wood. After that it was only a matter of time, while he worked at the wood round the lock. When he had the file right inside he levered on it. For a moment he was afraid that the file would break. Then there was a tearing sound, and the wood round the lock gave way.

He opened the drawer, and stared disbelievingly at its contents. There were some twenty little envelopes in the drawer, of the kind used as wage packets. He picked up the envelopes one by one, and examined them. They were exactly what they appeared to be, and they were empty.

Hunter looked at the other drawer, and wondered whether there was any point in forcing it. A man who kept empty wage packets in one locked drawer might keep a ready reckoner in the other. But why, then, did friends of Pine’s come up to this office in the evening? He began to work on the other drawer.

Five minutes later he had it open, and he began to laugh. The drawer contained two more tubes of Alka Seltzer and two more jars of health salts. There were also some papers. They contained lists of some two hundred and fifty names and addresses, headed, ‘Regular Monthly Contributors to PFC Funds.’ Most of the names were of women, and some of them were titled.

Hunter stopped laughing. He wondered why a man should want to keep so many bottles of Alka Seltzer and health salts in his office, and why he should keep them under lock and key. There was a wash basin in the room, with a plastic mug by its side. He put water in the mug, shook some of the powder from the jar of health salts on the desk into it. The mixture fizzed like health salts, and tasted like health salts. He repeated the operation with powder from both jars in the drawer. It did not fizz. He emptied out the water and put the white powder on his tongue. It tasted bitter.

He repeated the test with the Alka Seltzer tablets, which in every case fizzed, and bounced up to the surface. The Alka Seltzer was genuine.

The outer office contained a telephone directory. In the L–R section he found Pine, H A, 34 Mallorby Gardens, SW7.

Hunter put the two jars containing drugs into his pocket. He picked up the suitcase, went down the stairs and out, without seeing the caretaker. He closed the door of the office block behind him. As he turned again into Lower Regent Street, his face was solemn.