Talking to Strange Men (31 page)

The man called Peter Moran had gone away again but now he reappeared to ask Charles if he would like a cup of coffee. Charles said OK in his economical way. Peter Moran looked at the car and said it was fine, it hadn't been so clean for years. This gave Charles, following him into the house, something to think about. It was glaringly obvious that the car was not very clean, was streaky and blotchy and the glass parts filmed with scum. Peter Moran began fumbling around in some very untidy drawers in a sort of sideboard. He handed Charles three, not two, pound coins and a good deal of loose change.

‘Go on, you may as well have it. You've done a good job.'

He smiled. Charles, who was able to assess people in a detached way, decided that the smile was ingratiating, even inviting, but not at all friendly. The man's eyes, pebble-like and still, were not involved in the smile. And then Charles did one of his feats of intuition or character-reading or whatever you called it, and knew in an instant what kind of a man Peter Moran was, a man who liked or fancied male persons of his age. The eyes moved now, flickering from
Charles's face down his body, the smile cooling to ice. An intense expression replaced it.

Charles didn't feel afraid, for the front door which led straight into this room stood wide open. It was more an interest that he felt and a measure of admiration for his own sensitivity, his own discernment. How had he known what this man was while at the same time not really knowing, except in a blurred vague way, the kind of things he would like to do to him?

He was in no doubt as to the nature of the payment that was being made to him. But he took it just the same, being rather short at the moment, having already made big inroads into his August allowance. He took the mug of coffee too. The money is to make me like him, he thought, no more than that. Yet. Peter Moran indicated a chair at the table and when Charles didn't take up the offer, pulled it out for him. Charles sat down, looking at Peter Moran across the table. What did Mungo require of this man? What was supposed to come of their meeting? Beyond Peter Moran, as part of the back of the ancient sideboard, was a mirror in which Charles could see his head and shoulders reflected. If he had ever been ignorant of his own ‘prettiness', choirboy or cherub-like graces, his mother would soon have put him wise to them. She positively fostered them. Behind Peter Moran's intent rapt face he saw his own angel face, the clear and innocent blue eyes, the golden, albeit very short, hair, and felt a cold thrill along his spine as if a key had been dropped down his back. Peter Moran said:

‘What made you think a boy lived here?'

‘Mr Robinson told me.' This was an answer Charles had long ago formulated for any questions of this kind put to him by adults.

‘I don't know any Mr Robinson.'

Charles was ready for that one too. ‘He knows you.'

This had a better effect on Peter Moran than Charles could have hoped for, had indeed intended. He could hardly have grown paler but his face seemed to blank. His eyes shifted and he pushed his chair back.

‘Are you a scout or something?'

‘Because I cleaned your car? No. I have to go now. Thanks for the coffee.'

A hesitation, a pause, as if some inner argument were going on behind those glasses, that broad pale forehead. Then carefully:

‘I might have another job for you in a day or two. Not here though. We could meet. We could have a coffee in town somewhere.'

Charles smiled. He could afford to. He was out on the doorstep and two women with shopping bags had appeared, gossiping on the pavement.

‘You haven't told me your name.'

‘It's Cameron, Ian Cameron,' said Charles. ‘Church Bar. It's in the phone book.'

THE HOTEL WAS
not a building but a collection of little circular huts with grass-thatched roofs, very fancy inside and incorporating bedroom, bathroom and sun terrace. Mungo and Graham O'Neill shared one of these. After dinner with the family at a seafood restaurant in the village they came back here and wrote a postcard for Mr Lindsay, putting Corcyra instead of Corfu at the top next to the date. A sop to Cerberus, was the way Graham put it. So they wrote that as well, thinking it would please the frustrated classicist.

‘Cerberus would do as an agent's name,' said Mungo. ‘I don't know why we never thought of that one.'

‘You can confer it on Martin Hillman,' said Graham, lighting a cigarette.

‘Do you have to smoke? If Dad comes by he'll go bananas worrying about your lungs.'

‘OK, I'm going to give it up but you can't expect me to give it up on holiday. A man must have some pleasures.
You're such a bloody Calvinist. I suppose it's the Scot in you.'

‘If you don't mind,' said Mungo. ‘Calvin was
French
.'

Graham fell asleep first. He usually did. Mungo sometimes thought it was the smell of cigarette smoke that kept him awake. The glass doors to the terrace stood open and the moon was very bright. Mungo lay in bed watching a lizard on the stucco wall just beyond the open door. The moonlight gave it an elongated very black shadow with flaring crest. If he half-closed his eyes and squinted a bit the lizard appeared to grow very large, assuming dragon-like proportions. This reminded him of Charles Mabledene and thence of the Moscow Centre code. Somehow he didn't have much faith in the possibility of Dragon finding the key to that code. Not unless, that is, Rosie Whittaker had decided to abandon it for a new one.

He turned his head to look at Graham's digital clock on the bedside table between them. There was something of his father's nature in Mungo and he worried quite badly if he thought he was missing out on sleep. A digital clock wasn't the best sort for someone of that temperament because you could actually see the minutes clicking away. But it wasn't light enough in here to depend on watches. The clock told him it was eleven forty-three and in that moment, in a flash of illumination, Mungo understood what the numbers at the end of Moscow Centre's messages were.

Not house numbers or phone numbers but the time. It was as simple as that. They were times, nine thirty-one, three minutes past ten, twelve fifty-eight. He considered waking up Graham to tell him but he didn't do this. Instead he got up and lay on the airbed out on the terrace, looking at the lizard which had become a dragon walking with slow relentless deliberation across a vast empty plain.

THE POLICE DIDN'T
come back. John racked himself all weekend, trying to decide what to do. He thought of going to see Mark Simms and telling him of the interview with Inspector Fordwych, and he did get as far as picking up the phone and dialling. But there was no answer from Mark, though he made repeated attempts. News of Rodney Maitland's court appearance was in the papers, the
Free Press
as well as the nationals, and on television too. But he had been charged with only one murder, that of the Bristol girl whose death had taken place in June. Unless things changed and they charged him with Cherry's murder, John decided he need take no action.

One effect the police visit did have on him was to send him back to cats' green to try to put things right there. We ought to learn from our experiences, John thought, and there had been a lesson in the fear he had felt when Fordwych and the girl called Aubrey arrived. Better take action to exonerate himself now than risk the consequences of a real involvement. The difficulty was that he didn't know the code for August. He looked at the note he had of the last message. ‘October men to take over from Sunday.' He remembered that he hadn't understood it at the time. Now he studied it.

It was the last message which had appeared at the drop during July and according to what seemed to be the rule should have contained in the old code an announcement of the new one. As far as he had understood it at all when he read it on the previous Thursday, he had taken October men to be a group of the gang, some recruits perhaps due to start in October. Yet it said they would begin operations on Monday and Monday had been 1 August, the first of the month when a new code would begin. Could
October Men
be the title of a book?

John called in at the library in Lucerne Road on his way home from work and asked the librarian if a book existed called
October Men
. It did. A novel of espionage by Anthony Price. They had a copy but it was out and an inquiry of the computer established that the central library copy and the Ruxeter Road copy were also out. Probably all borrowed by gang members, John thought. Next morning he did something he had never done before, scarcely knew you could do. But you didn't know what you could do till you tried. This seemed to him a profound philosophical reflection and of particular application to himself. It cheered him up too. He phoned Hatchard's and asked them if they had a copy of
October Men
. Several, they said. John went out at once to buy the paperback, missing his lunch to do so but thinking it worth while.

It rained heavily all afternoon and Trowbridge's had few customers. The one woman who did come in after four left without buying anything after Gavin had upset her. John heard her ask for orange blossom or was its proper name syringa? In a superior tone Gavin told her it was neither, these were names wrongly used by the ignorant. It was philadelphus. She said she was sure it wasn't, she didn't know what to do now, and left saying she would try the Tesco garden centre. Gavin returned to feeding the mynah pine nuts which he called pignolias. In the houseplant house John sat on a high stool with
October Men
on the bench in front of him and worked out the August code based on its first lines: ‘The General sat quietly in his car at the airport terminal waiting for his mother and his mistress . . .'

Gavin put his head inside the door.

‘OK if I take Grackle home for the night?'

He had got into the habit of doing this most nights. Where he got the money from John didn't know but he had acquired a Metro and he said the mynah enjoyed a ride in the car.

‘As far as I'm concerned,' John said.

On a piece of paper torn from his notebook he wrote in
October Men
: ‘Leviathan to Dragon: Discontinue Peter Moran inquiry. Do not tail, do not observe.' He put it inside one of the small plastic bags they used for snowdrop and crocus bulbs. The rain still rattled down on the glass roof.
It had been too wet that morning to come in on the Honda. He ran to the bus stop but by the time he got there the rain had stopped, the clouds spread out to the horizon and the sun started to blaze down. The long white wet road glittered in the sunlight, too bright to look at.

At cats' green he looked up into the inside of the central pillar. There was nothing. From the roll of sticky tape he had been carrying about with him in his jacket pocket for weeks now he broke two lengths and taped his message to the metal surface.

For the first time this evening he was aware of the passing of the year. By eight it was growing dark. Only three months now and it would be a year since Jennifer left him. He sat eating his meal of French bread, cheese and pickled onions – what the landlord of the Gander called a ploughperson's lunch – and read
October Men
. At nine he put on the television for the BBC's evening news. The first item was about the arrest of a man for the murder of a child in Lancashire. The little girl, missing for two weeks, had been found in a wood after being sexually assaulted and then strangled. John irresistibly thought of Peter Moran. These men probably didn't intend to murder their child victims. They killed them from panic, out of a fear of discovery, or to silence the crying and the pleas for help. It made John shudder. Suppose Peter Moran were to kill one of his victims? Of course it might be that he no longer had victims, that his court appearance and sentence, mild though that had been, had frightened him into controlling his impulses. But somehow John didn't believe this could be so. These propensities weren't so easily subdued. It was all very well for Jennifer to say he wouldn't hurt a child. How could she know?

It was almost at the end of the news, after all the stuff about Northern Ireland and South Africa and the Common Market and the Queen Mother, after all that, that the newscaster, almost idly it seemed, mentioned that Rodney Maitland, arrested last week for the Bristol murder, had today
been charged with murdering Marion Ann Burton in Cardiff in 1970 and Cherry Winifred Creevey in 1971.

Once more John tried to phone Mark Simms. The phone rang and rang. It looked as if Mark might be away on holiday. John thought there was something astounding, unreal, about being able to do ordinary normal things, about being able to enjoy yourself, go away on holiday, that sort of thing, after you had done what Mark had done. Surely now Mark would confess to the police? Surely he wouldn't let an innocent man – or innocent at any rate of that charge – take punishment for his own crime? He tried the phone again at ten and when there was again no answer he phoned Gavin. The mynah didn't exactly answer the phone but it could be heard gabbling away very near the mouthpiece.

‘Ha ha ha, damn!' it said. ‘I'm a basket case, I'm an empty nester.'

‘I'll be late in in the morning, Gavin. I won't be in till around eleven.'

Gavin didn't seem interested. ‘Yeah. Right,' he said. ‘No problem. Listen, can you hear him?'

‘Grackle rules OK,' shouted the mynah.

The police station he went to was the one in Feverton. Fordwych had said he could be found there. John walked all the way. He knew he had to go but he wanted to postpone getting there. His route took him past the remains of city wall at the feet of which the council had made lawns and planted coleus and this summer's favourite, love-lies-bleeding. The tables outside the wine bar were all crowded. John knew he would never be able to pass it without thinking of Jennifer and remembering how she had cried.

In the police station he asked for Detective Inspector Fordwych and was told to wait. It was as bad as being in a hospital out-patients' department. He waited and waited. The police station had windows which when you were outside looked as if the glass was painted white on the inside, it looked opaque, but when you were inside you could see out all right. You could see people who walked by and stole glances at their own reflections. At last he was told Fordwych would see him now and to come this way. It was Detective Constable Aubrey who came to fetch him. She took him into
a small impersonal office with maps and charts on the wall. Fordwych got up from behind the desk, came over and rather surprisingly shook hands with him.