I woke slowly and immediately tried to get back to sleep again. Awake hurt too much. And for a time I just lay there, trying to dream of the calm, innocent golden days of childhood, with the gentle warm breezes through the tall summer pines, and- Christ, my childhood hadn't been anything likethat! I slammed my feet on the floor and got myself mostly on top of them and worked my way towards the kitchenette. My head felt soft and bloated and my hands were waving like flags; give me a gun and I couldn't have hit William Tell Junior, let alone the apple on top.
But the water in the tap ran hot and there was some instant coffee in a jar and I could just remember how to put the two together. After that, I propped my bottom against the sink and stared at the message I'd pencilled on the opposite wall: buy eggs. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
After twenty minutes, give or take half an hour, I could remember the secret formula for making the coffee percolator work. While it did, I washed and shaved fairly close to my face, and put on some clothes. The suitcase I'd taken to Bergen was still sitting there only half unpacked. Today I'd really have to do something about it, or at any rate maybe. By then it was past eleven.
I'd just finished my second cup of real coffee and was thinking of reapplying for associate membership in mankind when the phone went. It was Jack Morris, from the Ministry. On a Sunday?
'How're you doing buster?"
'Staggering along. What are you doing awake on a Sunday?'
'Just keeping in touch. Hold on…" The phone went quiet. I rammed it against my ear, trying to pick out barking dogs, squawling children, birdsongs. Very faintly, in the distance. I heard another phone buzz.
Jack came back on. 'We had a little talk about getting your name in the papers, remember?'
'I remember.'
'I understand you've been making guest appearances in the Norwegian press.'
I carried the phone across to the window. The sky beyond the church was the colour of a coalminer's bath water and not much drier. The street shone dully, empty except for parked cars.
'Didn't know you read Norwegian,' I said. 'Anyway, I only found a dead man over there. Could happen to anybody.'
A blue Triumph 1500 turned in from Haverstock Hill and drifted casually towards my block.
'I've had a busy twenty-four hours, buster. The Kent bobbies were on to me about this time yesterday and they donot love you. They have the wild idea that you don't only carry guns and take shots at people but then you tip other people off about what's happened and get them sending sharp solicitors down to play habeas corpus. They wanted to know if that counts the same as raping the royal family and burning a naval dockyard. I said yes.'
The Triumph hesitated by the forecourt to my building, decided there wasn't room, and crawled along a bit farther.
I said, 'They'd never have got Mockby and they'd always have taken a plea on unlawful wounding. I just cooled things down and speeded them up. And anyway, my gun was licenced.'
Two large men in short, dark car coats climbed out of the Triumph and moved slowly but purposefully towards the block.
Jack said heavily, 'Your gun was licenced. Jesus, you'd better think of something more interesting than that. You remember I said when we wanted you, you'd hear sirens? You can hear sirens, buster.'
'Thanks, Jack.' I slammed the phone down and ran.
The bastard: trying to pin me down on the end of the phone like that. Or maybe he'd been warning me – if I was bright enough to take a hint. He might feel he owed me that much.
I yanked open my front door, reached the lift, and pressed the button. As I ran back I could hear it start whining upwards, and that might give me an extra minute. Whatever sort of cops they were, they'd be the sort whose feet prefer riding lifts to climbing stairs.
Back inside my own door, I threw an unopened laundry parcel into the Bergen suitcase, added the log, the derringer and clip, my wallet and passport, thanked God I'd put on real shoes and not slippers, remembered the pigskin hip flask, then grabbed up a sports jacket and my sheepskin and started travelling.
The lift was still whining back down, so I tiptoed down the first flight of stairs – noise carried in that stairwell – then heard it open, shut, and start back up. Now I could afford to run. I ran.
The Escort was on the far side of the road but that didn't matter because the landings in our block don't have windows.
Nobody could see me – unless they'd left a third man in the car, but they'd looked a bit casual for that. And they hadn't. I shoved the case into the back seat, started up, and drove soberly away.
For the moment, I was fireproof. I hadn't shot any coppers or raped any children, so I wasn't worth a real hunt. Just a description on the teletypes with a please-keep-a-look-out-for, and not even that for maybe an hour. But knowing Jack and Jack knowing me, the airports and docks would be specially notified; I could have trouble there. Still, for the moment I was fireproof.
I drove into the big car park at the bottom of Hampstead Heath and finished dressing out of sight of the road or houses. With fawn trousers, a green shirt, black-and-grey tweed jacket, and a brown silk tie I thought I'd lost in Brussels six months ago but found in a pocket of the suitcase, I was liable to lose my place in the Ten Best-Dressed Men List. But as long as I looked complete I didn't mind looking terrible.
The derringer and clip went on my left forearm again, spare rounds in my pocket, and then I started taking the pigskin flask apart.
I'd found it in Cyprus when the original owner had departed for Russia in – obviously – rather more of a hurry than I'd just left home. It was a lovely piece of work, but the KGB have always been the Aspreys of the espionage business. It poured whisky, of course, but when you wound the cap hard the wrong way the whole short neck came off and you could lift the shoulders of the flask right out of the leather, leaving a long inner neck down to the booze compartment at the bottom. That was the master touch; who'd think of what is, essentially, a bottle having a false top? Certainly not me; I'd only been suspicious enough to get the thing X-rayed by an industrial unit.
As there'd been nothing in it and we hadn't caught the bloke anyway, I hadn't suppressed evidence by latching on to it. Now, it was my private savings bank: the teetotal end held £200 in sterling and nearly another hundred quid in Swiss francs. I took out £75 in fivers, smoothed them as much as I could, and shoved them in my wallet. Then reassembled the flask and drove across to Paddington station. No particular, reason except that I wanted to park the suitcase and Paddington's about the one station that doesn't point to the Continent or Scandinavia.
Then I got on the phone to Willie.
'You're still with us, are you?' he asked cheerfully.
'More or less.'
'Have you heard any more from Bergen?'
'No – but I'm sort of heading in that direction myself anyway. Could you ring this number-' I read across the one Kari had given me '-and tell her I'm on my way?'
'Of course, but – why the rush?'
'I'm sort of on the run. The Ministry decided to pull the chain on me. I don't know what the charges are, and I think it's just general stroppiness about the shooting at Kingscutt, but I don't want to be tied down right now. All right?"
'Well – are you going to be able to make it?'
'I think so. I've got an idea or two. I'll try and keep in touch.'
After that, there didn't seem much more to say.
Then I rang Dave Tanner's office; I knew he checked in around noon, so I hoped he'd get my message in a few minutes.
I tried to make it simple but obscure – the man on the other end might be law-abiding or stupid or something. 'Tell Tanner that Jamie rang and it's urgent. Ask him to leave a number and I'll ring back to get it in a quarter of an hour. Okay? '
He started to argue, then realised he'd understood me, and just said, 'All right, Mr Jamie.'
I had a coffee and skimmed a couple of Sunday papers and then the buffet opened and I had a beer as well. And then it was time to try Tanner's office again. He'd left a London number for me; I rang it straight away.
'Morning, Major. What's the hurry?'
'I need to get abroad, and I don't want to put the passport boys to any bother.'
After a moment, he asked, 'Are you hot?'
'Barely warm. I don't suppose it'll even be in the papers.'
Another thoughtful hush. 'Well, if you're really not in bad trouble… I'll see what we can do. Anywhere special or just out?'
'Just across the Channel will do me. I'd prefer not France, but I'll risk it if I have to.'
'0-okay, Major. Where are you now?'
I instinctively paused, and he felt it, chuckled, and said, 'Doesn't matter. Ring me here at half past three and maybe I'll have something. But these things work better on Fridays and Saturdays.'
After that I had another beer, found an Indian restaurant a couple of streets away, and loaded up on curried beef and rice. Eating might become rare in the next twenty-four hours. Then I spent a couple of hours in a cinema learning the Real Truth about the Old West. It seems they didn't only spend all their, time shooting each other, but – this was the big news – they bled a lot too. Someday somebody's going to do the Real Truth about the chances of hitting anybody with a -44 or -55 without five minutes' aiming time first.
Or then again, maybe they won't.
I got through to Tanner again at the right time.
'You're travelling, Major. I'll meet you at the office – long as you make sure you come alone. Right?'
'Right.'
'Hate to mention it, but how are you for money – real cash?'
'I can do you fifty as a down payment,' I said carefully.
'Yes, all right. Seeing as you're an old and trusted client. See you.'
I got my suitcase out of the left-luggage and strolled across towards the taxi-rank in the middle of the station. Nearly there, I noticed one of those copying machines they stick in railway stations nowadays for no good reason I can think of except they must make a profit. I changed some money into five-pence pieces, got out the log, and copied off the last four pages. The copies went in my pocket, the log back in the case.
My car could just stay where it was; it was too complicated to start organising anybody to collect it. It was in a quiet street with the steering lock on, so… I shrugged to myself and lined up for a taxi.
Dave's office was in a converted Georgian terrace literally on the fringes of the law north of Gray's Inn and the Theobald's Road police station. All around were the small-time solicitors who could remember the name of the Duke but not where they'd put your file, the income-tax advisers who were careful not to call themselves accountants, the doctors who could get your friend into a good nursing home cheap. Dave's organisation didn't belong with them, but he'd move if they did; he knew his place and it wasn't behind a big glass front in Leaden-hall Street. If you had a problem that was a teensy-weensy bit disgusting or just slightly illegal, he might or might not take your case, but he didn't want a classy décor to put you off telling him about it.
I was let in by a lad who couldn't have been more than twenty-five – which was probably why he found himself handling the Sunday business – but already had the hard, prove-it eyes of his trade. I said I was Jamie to see Dave and he led me upstairs without a word.
Dave nodded to him, waited till he'd closed the door, then waved me to a seat. 'Evening, Major. Sorry to hear about all this.'
I shrugged and sat. His office, and the others in his organisation, had the atmosphere of an oldestablished newspaper: big battered desks, solid filing cabinets, a general air of inexpensive efficiency. In the corner was a big grey safe, a really serious job where Dave told his clients he kept their files and actually did keep a few.
'Does Dunkirk suit you? – sorry I can't do Belgium direct, but you'll be over the frontier in half an hour or so.'
'It's fine. When?'
'You're on the eight-o'clock boat from Dover. Coach trip -five capitals in four days, lucky you. Denniston's Tours, here's your ticket. Have you got any luggage, or want to borrow some?'
'I'm okay. It wasn't that much of a hurry.'
He lifted his eyebrows but let it pass. Then he opened a drawer and took out a British passport almost handed it over, then remembered to scrub it clean of fingerprints first. Just in case.
'Victoria coach station, five o'clock. See the tour guide; give him your ticket and that passport.'
I'd been looking at my new identity. Apart from the fact that it was about a man of roughly my age, it fitted me as well as a halo did. He was two inches shorter, with different-coloured eyes and hair, and the photograph showed glasses.
'I hate to quibble, Dave, but somehow this just isn'tme, if you know what I mean.'
'Doesn't matter, Major. Could be for a performing bear and nobody would know. The courier hands it up with twenty-four others, they count twenty-five heads, twenty-five passports, bingo, you're through. On these tours half the old berks would lose their passports if you let 'em keep them for themselves.'
'Is that how you came by this one?'
'Not quite. This one lost his life, too. There're always some, every year. Run a coach over a cliff, caught in an avalanche, hotel burns down, or they just freeze to death waiting for it to be built. The Army's got nothing on these tours, Major. And if the passport's still with the courier or. hotel, well, who can prove it?'
And there's always somebody to remember there's a market for these things. In some countries, of course, it's a state monopoly: the KGB could make them, all right, but an agent's too valuable to risk with a forged passport that needs only a single check to show its number was never issued, or to a different name. It takes longer to pin down a real one, even if the owner's dead; how many widows remember it's their duty to turn hubbie's passport in once he's planted?
I nodded. 'And after that, what?'
'Once you're on the boat you're on your own. Use your own passport – you've got it, haven't you? – to get off at Dunkirk. No problem.'
'And nobody cares that I've gone AWOL from the tour?'
'It's no crime, even if anybody noticed. Same thing for the passport control over there: they get twenty-four passports, they count twenty-four heads. Just don't wiggle your hips at any rich widows in the coach: they might start asking what happened to the nice man with the military manner.'
'I'll try and remember, Dave.'
'Fine. This Sunday work knocks hell out of me. Care for a quick one?'
Before I could answer he'd lifted the bottle out of the deep file drawer on the right of the desk – just like the classic private detective. So? So you get plenty of people behaving like the popular image of themselves, including judges and politicians as well as private eyes and sergeant-majors. It keeps their clients reassured.
It was a very pale single-malt Scotch; good, maybe too good for me. I still prefer my whisky soaked in soda. There had to be a good reason why the Cards left Scotland.
We toasted each other. Outside in the main office the phone rang and got answered, the typewriter clattered, a drawer in a filing cabinet screeched.
Tanner said, 'There's just the sordid business of money, Major.'
'Of course.' I took out my wallet and dealt him a double flush in fivers. He collected them slowly and stacked them on one side by the desk intercom, and asked, "You're sure you don't mind about it being France?"
'I'll survive.'
'I expect so. Did you have time to get some protection into your luggage, or d'you want to borrow something? Hire it, I mean."
I smiled a little bleakly. 'No thanks, Dave. I'm all right.' At any rate I wasn't going to land in France carrying an extra, and unfamiliar, pistol. The derringer on my arm was risk enough.
'Okay. You heading anywhere in particular?'
'Norway.'
'Again?' But he didn't press it. 'Had you thought of hiring us totry and clear things up for you so's you can come back?'
'Not yet. I think things'll just blow over.'
'You ought to know.'
'That's what I keep telling myself.'
We had one more drink and it got to be after half past four. He stood up. 'The wife's got people coming in, and you'd better not be late, either.* I gulped the last of my Scotch and then waited while he locked and double-locked the office door behind us. Every serious private detective has files he doesn't want his employees to see, and maybe particularly the employees junior enough to land the Sunday-evening switchboard watch. There's more than one way to the top in private detection.
I picked up my suitcase from near the door and followed him downstairs. We shook hands before we left – separately, just in case. I had to walk right down to Theobald's Road before I caught a taxi.