‘So why are you still following the girl? Why not the errant husband? If you are going to do some pro bono tailing, that would make more sense.’
I had the answer, of course: a simple coincidence involving two men called Frank Lang. But Connelly’s union wouldn’t appreciate being brought to the attention of someone like Hopkins.
‘Look,’ I said, trying to sound appeasing, ‘I understand I’ve trodden on toes — but all that’s happened is I’ve innocently stumbled into a much bigger deal than anything I’m interested in.’
Hopkins sat with his hand still resting on the file, his expression unreadable beneath the cloak of his polite smile.
‘Okay,’ I nodded again to his neckwear. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, that’s an Intelligence Corps tie. I’m guessing you’re now with the Security Service or MI5 or whatever it is they call themselves these days and your job is to keep tabs on Johnny Foreigner on British soil. Am I right?’
‘In spirit if not in substance. Who was your client?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that. But I promise you that whatever your interest in this girl or her chums, it has nothing to do with why I was following her.’
‘My department does indeed deal with monitoring the activities of foreign nationals. Specifically emigre, refugee and other expatriate groups active within the UK.’ He opened the file and slid a large head-and-shoulders photograph across the table to me. The woman I had seen with Ellis. In this official picture, however, her hair was scraped and tied back and her face was naked of make-up under the harsh, uncompromising light of a flashbulb. She still looked a knock-out.
‘This is the woman you were following?’
I nodded. Hopkins slid a second photograph across to me.
‘Do you recognize this man?’ he asked, his eyes locked on my face.
I made a big deal of studying the photograph before shaking my head. Too big a deal, from the weary expression on Hopkins’s face.
‘You were seen talking to this gentleman in a cafe in the West End of Glasgow just two days ago. Listen, old boy, I really would rather avoid any unpleasantness so I would ask you not to insult my intelligence.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So I’ve seen him. But it wasn’t an arranged meeting. He pulled the same stunt as you and introduced himself and made it clear he was pretty up-to-date with my social calendar too. So he followed me to the cafe and you followed him. You know something? I must wander about Glasgow blissfully unaware that I have an entourage bigger than the Queen’s.’
‘What did he discuss with you?’
‘He asked me to keep my nose out of his business. I guess he knew that I’d seen my client’s husband with her…’ I stabbed a finger at the photograph of the woman. It was a lie, of course, and I didn’t mention that my call to Tabori the Hungarian consul was really what had spiked Matyas’s interest. I had to keep Hopkins away from my looking for Frank Lang for Connelly. But for all I knew, Hopkins knew all about that as well.
‘And he told you his name?’ Hopkins asked as he topped up his coffee cup.
‘Just his first name. Matyas. Matthew.’
‘Yes… Matyas Pasztor. He was a founding member of Petofi Circle
…’
I shrugged.
‘A group of writers and intellectuals who started off the protests against the Rakosi government in Hungary. Pasztor is a poet. He has organized his own emigre group here in Glasgow. The young lady you followed belongs to his group.’
‘He doesn’t sound like a dangerous alien,’ I said.
‘Probably not. But he is helping others escape from Hungary — and it would appear some chaff is getting through with the wheat.’
‘What kind of chaff?’
‘Let’s just say undesirable elements. Undesirable on both sides of the Curtain.’
‘Would one of those elements go by the name of Ferenc Lang?’ I asked.
For a moment, Hopkins looked at me long and hard.
‘I think, Mr Lennox, you had better tell me absolutely everything you know about Ferenc Lang.’
And I did.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Two Frank Langs. There had been two of them all along.
I had lectured Pamela Ellis on how it was always best to apply Occam’s Razor, or the Duck Rule, to every situation, and that the simplest explanation was usually the right one — but I had failed to do the same thing myself. There had been two Frank Langs from the beginning, completely unconnected other than for the fact that the name had cropped up when Taylor had been sniffing about and his Frank Lang had been Hungarian-born like Ellis.
There was, of course, every chance that Hopkins had been playing me. Deception was his stock-in-trade, after all, but there was no reason for him to throw up a smokescreen: I already was as lost as it was possible to be. And the truth was I didn’t care. Sometimes you just had to learn to take a warning and the warning I had been given had done the trick. Hopkins had rattled the right skeletons in the right closets for me to get the message loud and clear. I resolved to drop the whole Ellis thing and go back to looking for my Frank Lang, the Frank Lang whose Lanarkshire origins were less than exotic.
My resolve didn’t prevent me becoming increasingly paranoid over the next three days. It was the right place at the right time for paranoia: the world had dimmed a little more as the Scottish winter days shortened and the weather took a turn for the worse. I spent much of my time looking over my shoulder for shadowy Hungarians, even shadowier government agents, or even the odd ghost from Hamburg lurking somewhere in the gloom. I also grew cagey about whom I spoke to and what I said on the ’phone.
Hopkins had kept me for four hours, with a break for sandwiches and more crap coffee, all the time telling me how free I was to leave whenever I wished. In my time, I’d been put through the mill by all kinds of cops, both civilian and military. No one had ever gotten a word out of me that I didn’t want them to have. Hopkins, I had decided, would be no different. Putting up a stonewall defence, I had been absolutely determined to stop him getting anything from me.
By the time his beefy chums from Special Branch had dropped me back at my car, Hopkins had wheedled every last bit of information he had wanted to get out of me. There wasn’t a bean that I left unspilled. The one thing I had been determined to keep out of his view was my involvement with Connelly and the union and the truth of why I’d been looking for a Frank Lang.
I told him all about that too.
The information you get from people by pulling out their fingernails is never reliable. Any sane person tells their torturer whatever the hell they think he wants to hear, whether it is the truth or not, just so they can hang on to their ability to scratch their backsides. Hopkins was the most skilled interrogator I had ever experienced, and he hadn’t even resorted to being brusque — which caused me to reflect on how different history would have been if the Spanish Inquisition had relied on the use of muffins and sherry.
Every time I had lied or bent the truth to send Hopkins in the wrong direction, it seemed to expose another truth elsewhere. It was like plugging holes in a dyke only to see the water break through somewhere out of reach. And all the time, whenever I had managed to hold something back, he would bring the conversation back to my dubious history and I would tell him the truth to keep him away from my personal demons and secrets.
The only thing he didn’t get out of me was the word Tanglewood. It wasn’t that I made a huge effort to keep it from my scrupulously polite, Savile Row-tailored inquisitor; it was simply that it didn’t come up. That meant it was either of no significance or, if it was, Hopkins did not know about it. Of course, there was always the chance that he was keeping it from me.
By the time we were through, I guessed he knew that he had gotten the truth out of me. It was an odd feeling: both relief and self-disgust. He had somehow managed to make me feel unburdened, as if he had done me
