‘Not at all… You’re free to go whenever you choose, but it would most definitely be in your best interest to cooperate. Let me put it that way.’
I looked around the room. ‘I didn’t know you people had a place in Glasgow,’ I said.
‘We people?’
‘Humble civil servants who may beg favours from Special Branch.’
‘Quite…’ He smiled. I got a better look at the by-the-guinea tailoring: an expensive houndstooth-check sports jacket over a mustard waistcoat, Tattersall shirt and camel-coloured corduroy trousers. The kind of country-wear worn by those whose idea of the country was Kensington Gardens. I noticed his tie: a pattern of alternating diagonal bands, broad black broken by a narrow white edged with a red pinstripe.
‘We have only moved in here temporarily,’ he explained. ‘Needs must basis, you understand.’
‘Your old regiment?’ I asked, nodding towards his tie.
‘Oh… this? Something like that,’ he said airily. I never understood why his type always pretended to be dismissive of their school or military backgrounds, when they wore them around their necks. I had never felt the need to wear either my Rothesay Collegiate School for Boys tie or a regimental badge-emblazoned blazer. Both my old school and regiment probably appreciated my discretion.
‘I was in the First Canadian, myself,’ I said conversationally.
‘Yes, Captain Lennox. I’m fully aware of what is in your service record. And what isn’t.’
‘I see. It’s like that, is it? Why don’t you tell me what this cloak and dagger malarkey is all about? And if we’re going to get all chummy, I should at least know what to call you.’
‘Oh… didn’t I introduce myself?’ He placed his hand on the breast pocket of his jacket, as if that was where he kept his name, like a bus ticket. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. My name is Hopkins.’
‘Does that come with a prefix… Colonel… Major… Captain…?’
‘As I told you, I’m a civil servant. Civilian. Or at least I am these days.’ He took a silver case from his pocket and offered me a cigarette, which I took.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Hopkins?’
‘These are troubling times. Take this unfortunate situation in Suez, or the current tumult in Hungary. Events in Hungary are coming to a regrettable close. Unfortunately for the Hungarians, Suez has taken everyone’s eye off the ball.’
‘But not your eye, that it?’
‘I’m a Middle Europe, not a Middle East expert. I was never looking anywhere else. The Hungarians, like the Poles, misinterpreted Khrushchev’s so-called secret speech and judged the Soviets would give them their freedom. The Poles played their hand much better and got their man Gomulka back in the premiership. But Gomulka didn’t talk about breaking free of Moscow, Nagy did. This will all end very badly for the Hungarians.’
Hopkins stood up and poured coffee from the percolator into each of the cups. He held up the cream jug and I shook my head.
‘But my interest is in what that can mean for us,’ he continued. ‘Our experts estimate that as many as a quarter of a million Hungarians will flee their native land over the next few months. That’s more than two hundred thousand threats and opportunities.’
He handed me the black coffee.
‘We picked you up because you were following a young lady we have an interest in. Her and her friends. Why were you following her?’
‘I heard she has a good goulash recipe.’
‘I believe you operate as some kind of private detective here in Glasgow, Mr Lennox.’ Hopkins adopted a tone of measured impatience. ‘I am assuming your interest in the young woman was professional? I do hope you don’t mind me asking, it’s just that we’re aware of your significant recreational interest in the fair sex, shall we say.’
‘You seem to be very well informed about me.’
Hopkins laid a proprietorial hand on top of the buff file. Whether it signified he felt owned the file or the subject of the file was hard to say.
‘Why were you following the young lady?’
‘Business, Mr Hopkins. Mine and not yours. You deal in secrets, I deal in confidences. I’m not prepared to betray a professional one on account of a cup of lousy coffee and a Rich Tea.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I deal in facts, in information. One of the facts is that the Hamburg police — and our own Redcaps, for that matter — still have an open file going back to Nineteen Forty-five. A young man called Dietrich Holzmann was found floating face down in the Alster Lake with a broken neck. Holzmann was the front man in a major black-market operation, but he had a partner. Not so much a silent partner, as an invisible one who was suspected to be an Allied officer stationed in Hamburg. British… or Canadian. The German police would really like to talk to that officer.’
‘So this is how you win friends and influence people? By threatening them with the bent arm of the law?’ I asked without ire. ‘May I ask you a question?’
‘Please feel free…’
‘You spirited me off the street…’ I looked at my watch, ‘… thirty-five minutes ago. You and I have been together for all but fifteen of those thirty-five minutes. You haven’t once asked my name or to see some I.D., yet you are impressively well versed in every particular of my military service, both on-and off-the-record, and you seem to know all my personal details right down to my inside leg measurement.’
‘We picked you up because you were going to compromise our surveillance of the girl. I didn’t say that we were unaware of your involvement until today.’
‘So, because I innocently stumble onto your cricket pitch, you threaten me with a free ticket back to Hamburg.’ I stood up. ‘If you have anything to pass on to the German police, the Redcaps, the Mounties or my tailor, then I suggest you do it. In the meantime I’m leaving…’
‘You’re free to leave if you wish,’ he said. ‘But, I would strongly recommend you stay and answer my questions. We both know we don’t have to look as far as Germany to find something inconvenient in your past. There are answers to questions the City of Glasgow Police would be grateful to receive.’ He paused, watching my face while his remained unreadable. ‘You are a very special kind of man, Mr Lennox. Not unique, however… I have met you many times before. Different faces, different cities, different languages, but the same type of man.’
‘And what type of man is that?’
‘A man who leaves behind him a trail of dead men and broken hearts.’
‘Dead men and broken hearts?’ I smiled appreciatively. ‘Very lyrical.’
‘As a matter of fact, I did read it in a book. But that is exactly what you have left behind you. Here in Glasgow too. If you want, I can be very specific about the dead men part.’
I said nothing.
‘Listen, this doesn’t have to be about threats,’ he cradled his coffee cup as if sitting in a vicarage parlour, ‘There are also opportunities for us both.’
‘What kind of opportunities?’
‘We could use someone like you. On occasion. You have… skills… we could use. But, for the moment, I really do need to know why you were following our surveillance suspect. Then, hopefully, we can discuss opportunities for future cooperation — or at the very least get out of each other’s hair.’
I weighed him up; Hopkins was as in control of the situation as it was possible to be. But, there again, he had had a lot of experience. The pattern on his tie told me he would be expert at getting more out of someone in five minutes with a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit than the average Glasgow copper could beat out of a suspect after a month of swinging a rubber hosepipe. I sat back down.
‘So why were you following that particular young lady?’ he asked again.
‘The truth? No politics, no cloaks and no daggers. A marital fidelity case, plain and simple. I saw her with the husband in question. I was just following it up.’
‘I see,’ said Hopkins. ‘We seem both to be in the business of assessing fidelity, of one kind or another. And you are working on this case at the moment?’
‘I am… I mean, I was… It’s complicated.’
‘You are either being paid to follow this woman around Glasgow or you’re not. I don’t see anything complicated in that.’
‘The wife paid me off. She said she was happy with her husband’s explanation.’
