Horse Under Water (9 page)

My flat in Southwark was cold when I got back there at 8 a.m. after the all-night discussion with Dawlish. I paid the cab and had difficulty getting the front door open because of the heap of mail on the front mat. There were the usual things. Red-printed ones from the rates office and a very patient one from Electrolux; thirteen pounds outstanding, I could almost hear the sigh. Advertisements for Lux, a postcard from Munich wishing I was there, a receipt from L.E.B., and the cistern was overflowing methodically.

I switched on the fan heater, boiled a kettle and ground coffee. While I was waiting for the coffee to drip through I phoned the office number, gave them the code word, then told the operator, ‘If Mr MacIntosh phones, tell him to get a car and collect me at about five o’clock this afternoon. We have to go and collect my car from the airport. If he hasn’t phoned in by noon get the message to him at Brown’s Hotel.’

I poured a generous slug of Teacher’s whisky into sweet black coffee and sipped it slowly. The night without sleep was beginning to thump me gently on the cranium. It was 8.45 a.m. I went to bed just as the next-door radio tuned in to Housewives’ Choice. Upstairs the vacuum cleaner began its fiendish flagellation. I dozed.

I looked at my watch in the darkness. The doorbell was ringing. I had slept eight hours, and now Joe MacIntosh was at the door and eager to get to grips with the night-life of the Metropolis. He had one of the taxis from the car pool. They were specially tuned to do over ninety m.p.h. and MacIntosh was keen to find out how much over.

I took a tepid shower, which is my special way of entering the world of consciousness. Then I dressed in a manner suited to a Soho low-life tour – dark worsted and black woollen shirt, with a trench coat that can take home-brew alcohol splashes without flinching.

It was a pleasure to see Joe handle that souped-up cab. His huge shy hands stroked the controls and we slid through the traffic with an élan he never otherwise showed. ‘Nowhere,’ said Joe quietly as we ascended the Chiswick flyover, ‘do Englishmen show a greater spirit of compromise than in straddling a traffic lane.’ He nudged the horn, flicked the cab over to the fast lane and stabbed the speed up to seventy with an acceleration that almost fired me out of the jump seat. He
moved through the crash gearbox that all these cabs had with a nerveless skill.

When we got to London airport he parked behind the cab rank and put a glove over the flag in a very convincing way. My VW was tucked deeply into the Ministry of Aviation Priority pound; would I like Joe to get it for me?

It was only 6.30 p.m., but already it was dark and I felt fingers of rain tapping me on the shoulder. I gave him the key and went up to the bookstall for five minutes’ browsing. The headlines read, ‘No Capital Gains Tax this year – Official.’ The Americans were planning a monkey ride to the moon, the new Wehrmacht wanted nuclear weapons, Lady Lewisham was complaining about dirty teacups and the Minister had said that old age pensions just couldn’t be increased. I bought
Esquire
and walked out into the drizzle. There were lights around the car pound and I saw that Joe had moved enough of the cars to provide a lane through which to bring mine.

A Viscount came down the GCA talkdown, its white, red and green lights peep-boing the traffic patterns. Full flap, throttle back. The dark shape passed overhead with a contrapuntal shriek. I heard the wheels hit the tarmac and the automatic control pull the blades into ‘ground-fine’ pitch. Joe was at the far end of the enclosure; he opened the door of my VW, got in and switched on the main lights. The rain tore little gashes through the long beams.

From inside the car came an intense light; each window was a clear white rectangle, and the door on Joe’s side opened very quickly. It was then that the blast sent me across the wet pavement like a tiddly-wink.

‘Walk not run,’ I thought. I jammed my spectacles on to my nose and got to my feet. A cold current of air advised me of an eight-inch rent in my trouser leg. People ran past towards the car park. The explosion had fired the inflammable parts of an adjacent car. The flames lit up the neighbourhood and a bell began to ring close at hand. I heard the attendant shouting ‘Two fellers went over there, two fellers.’ I had my keys in my hand by the time I got back to the cab rank. I selected two. With the first I unlocked the anti-thief device on the gear lever. The second I plugged into the ignition, started up and pulled out of the rank. From the car park I heard another ‘boom’ and saw a flash as a petrol tank exploded. I drove round the roundabout. ‘Other way, cabbie,’ said an airport policeman. The grazed palms of my hands were throbbing and the steering wheel was wet with blood and sweat. I switched the radio to ‘stand by’ to warm the transmitting valves.

‘What’s going on over there, mate?’ I asked him. ‘Keep moving,’ said the policeman. I was through the tunnel and away. Just to be on the safe side I turned left at the main road before using the two-way radio.

They answered promptly. ‘Go ahead Oboe Seven. Over,’ said the operator.

‘Oboe Seven to Provisional. Message. Black London Airport Ministry of Aviation car park. One student: MacIntosh. Flat. Scissors.
^*
Over.’

‘Provisional to Oboe Seven. How are you proceeding? Over.’

‘Oboe Seven.
A
4, approaching Slough. Over.’

‘Thank you, Oboe Seven. Roger. Out. Provisional at stand by.’

When Dawlish came in on the radio telephone link he was touchingly concerned for my safety, but remembered first to ask for the name of my insurance company. He said, ‘We can’t afford to have them getting curious about how it happened before we send out the D notice.’
^†

I soon mastered the knack of double-declutching the crash gearbox.

A great big sunny Friday in London, the policemen standing around like tourists. On Jermyn Street two old men edged crabwise past the calm cheeses of Paxton and Whitfield. On five-string banjo and accordion they whitewashed the sound of ‘La vie en rose’ across the brittle winter air. Jean was waiting for me at Wilton’s restaurant. She wore a dark-brown Chanel suit. How did she manage it on her salary? A pale sherry awaited me and so did the news of the Strutton Report.

‘O’Brien is forming one of his famous little committees,’ she said.

‘O lord,’ I groaned, ‘I know what that means.’

‘You’re well out of the way,’ said Jean. ‘Dawlish is sitting in on it at present. They will discuss chain of command.’

‘Power,’ I said. ‘Lord Acton wasn’t kidding.’

‘Even the War House are trying to get into the act.’

‘It can’t possibly be anything to do with them,’ I said.

‘You know how it is,’ said Jean. ‘If they don’t make at least a token play for the things they don’t want, they’d have no bargaining gambits for the things they do want.’

‘You are highly knowledgeable on the subject of interdepartmental committee work.’

Jean smiled and replied, ‘I’m only telling you what every woman has always known.’

The waitress brought the famous Wilton menu that has no prices on it. I’d never been foolhardy enough to ask for anything but what the chef recommended and this was no day to start flexing my muscles.

The melon had gone, and the fresh salmon too, before Jean brought up the subject of the package that da Cunha had given me.

‘Alice even predicted that the sovereign die would portray Queen Victoria – that was brilliant, wasn’t it?’

‘Brilliant.’

‘How do you think she guessed?’

‘No idea,’ I said.

‘You have too. Please tell me,’ said Jean.

‘For the simple reason that Queen Victoria is a woman.’

‘Was
a woman,’ said Jean.

‘Don’t be smart,’ I said, ‘
is
a woman where counterfeit sovereigns are concerned.’

‘So?’

‘Arab countries, or rather let’s say Muslim countries, are very much in the market for sovereigns, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Muslims object to unveiled female face, therefore most counterfeit sovereigns depict a king. Therefore a Queen Victoria sovereign is unlikely to be counterfeit, therefore Nazis decide to make their super-duper authentic die in the likeness of Queen Victoria.’

‘And it works?’

‘When they thought of it it was a wow, but now it’s been tumbled to for ages, but since counterfeit and genuine fetch the same price, who cares?’

‘And Alice guessed that it would be of Nazi origin?’

‘I radioed Dawlish and got diplomatic clearance for a parcel of that size and weight. Alice jumped to a tentatively correct conclusion.’

‘Tentatively?’ Jean poured me some more coffee.

‘Oh, it’s dead right as far as it goes. But let’s not jump to any conclusion. There are no markings on the mould, nothing to connect it with the U-boat or the Nazis or with anything, come to that.’

‘I see,’ said Jean, ‘you mean that these people at Albufeira may have merely given it to you to get rid of you. In fact, as a straightforward bribe. That they didn’t expect you to believe that it came straight from the sea.’

Jean paused. ‘Or if they thought you were from this man Smith it could be a bribe to Smith,’ she paused again, ‘so he would do something.’

‘Or not do something,’ I prompted.

She looked up. ‘Yes,’ she said, speaking each word separately and slowly, ‘discontinue the investigation?’

‘Zen,’ I said, ‘you got it quicker than Dawlish.’

‘Now let me see, this man da Cunha says it came from a German sailor’s body that came out of a fishing net, but they don’t do “bottom trawl” fishing anywhere hear where the U-boat is, they do American-style closing circle fishing, don’t they?’

‘“Purse seine” style, yes, you’re reading me loud and clear, and it didn’t come from any German corpse either.’

Jean said, ‘If it was a bribe, it would be a pretty good one, wouldn’t it? I mean, worth a lot of money.’

‘Yes, you can get about 50,000 coins from a good die and this is a good one. It certainly would be worth a lot of money, especially to someone involved with illegal movement of gold.’

‘So that when you returned to London our people out there continued to dive on the wrecked U-boat. They realized that the bribe hadn’t worked and so they planted dynamite in your car?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘that explosion was a carefully planned venture. They find out that I always send my car to L.A.P., discover where it’s parked,
employ a specialist to do quite a complex wiring job, buy dynamite. I don’t think that there is an immediate connexion between my getting the package from this man da Cunha and the bomb that killed Joe. The two things may be unrelated.’

‘Then who is this man da Cunha?’ Jean asked.

‘Work it out for yourself,’ I said. ‘He speaks perfect Portuguese – syntax and inflection wonderful! He dresses like a Portuguese aristocrat should. I have had my knees under his table, I can tell you the food is authentic. As for Portuguese history and folklore, he is one of the greatest ear-benders in Western Europe.’

‘You are going to prove that he isn’t Portuguese,’ Jean said, ‘because he says he
is.
’

‘I’ve got a hunch,’ I said.

‘What you’ve got is a pointed head,’ Jean said rudely, ‘but tell me what I have to do.’

‘I want one of the movie people to go on holiday in Southern Portugal,’ I said.

‘Victor had better go,’ said Jean, ‘he has a genuine Swiss passport and he knows how to stay out of trouble.’

‘That’s good,’ I said, ‘we’ve had all the trouble we can use for the time being.’

Jean was quiet for a few moments, then she said softly, ‘I’d just like to kill whoever murdered Joe.’

‘I’ll forget that you spoke.’ I looked at her for a moment, then said, ‘If you want to continue working in the department you’ll never even
think
a
thing like that, let alone say it. There is no room for heroics, vendettas and associated melodrama in an efficient shop. You stand up, get shot at, then carry on quietly. Suppose I’d been full of George-Cross-emotion and gone running back to Joe last night. I’d have got myself smothered in smoke, reporters, blisters and policemen. Act grown-up or I’ll cut your security rating back.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘O.K., but don’t ever hanker after tidiness. Don’t ever think or hope that the great mess of investigation that we work on is suddenly going to resolve itself like the last chapter of a whodunnit: I’ve-got-all-gathered-together-in-the-room-where-the-murder-was-done kind of scene. After we’re all dead and gone there will still be an office with all those manilla dust-traps tied in pink tape. So just knit quietly away and be thankful for the odd sock or even a lop-sided cardigan with one sleeve. Don’t desire vengeance or think that if someone murders you tomorrow we will be tracking them down mercilessly. We won’t. We’ll all be strictly concerned with keeping out of the
News of the World
and the
Police Gazette.
’

Jean was determined to prove what a master of her emotions she was. ‘The liaison officer at Scotland Yard sent pictures of your car over, did you see them?’

‘Yes, they sent me a set of wet prints last night. By the way, thank Keightley for doing a good job; there’s no mention in the dailies.’

‘Yes,’ said Jean, ‘they were writing D notices like a literate traffic warden. There were four cars written off. If the Yard people are right in reconstructing the explosion points, it’s almost as if they wanted the fire to spread.’

‘Really? Where were they?’

‘Under the bonnet, centre of the sunshine roof, behind the rear seat, between the front seats.’ The black make-up around her eyes had smudged slightly. She pushed at her dark hair, sniffed and smiled at me. ‘He brought me a green suede jacket,’ she said.

I paid the bill and we walked up towards Piccadilly together. ‘You always pump me when I’m dozily full of food and drink,’ I teased. Jean gave me another weak little smile and I took her arm. ‘I’m going back to Lisbon tonight. I want you to send that empty metal container up to F.S.L. at Cardiff.
^*
They’re very good at Cardiff. You’ve given me an idea, Jeannie. I think I know why my car was blown up now.’

I offered to get a cab for Jean but she declined. Outside Fortnum’s I hugged her arm. ‘It must have been absolutely instantaneous,’ I said.

Jean blew her nose and continued to study her shoes.