The Information Officer

“So, he’s left-handed,” said Max, taking the letter opener back.

“How many left-handers do you know?”

“Not many. We’re a significant minority.”

“Exactly. It narrows the field considerably.”

Max lit a cigarette. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything more to do with this.”

“So did I. It seems I was wrong.”

Freddie moved to the window, peering outside briefly before turning. “I’ve done a lot of thinking since the other day. Maybe it’s the way they treated us, but I don’t care anymore what they do to me. It’ll be their loss if they send me packing.” He hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty clouding his gaze. “Or maybe I’ve just had enough of it all and I’m hoping that’s exactly what they’ll do.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? I’m tired, Max. I’ve been here too long, seen too much—enough for a lifetime. You have no idea how I spend my days.”

“I can imagine.”

“No you can’t. We ran out of morphine yesterday. It was only for a few hours till they sent some over from Saint Patrick’s, but it was long enough. You wouldn’t believe the screaming—like they were being fed thistles.” He paused briefly. “I learned something new, though. The power of the mind. You can inject a man with saline solution, and if you tell him it’s morphine, his body will believe you.”

“Placebo.”

“I’m impressed.”

Max shrugged. “It’s what I do too—tell them it’s all okay and hope they’ll believe me.”

Freddie gave a weak smile. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

Max had seen Freddie low before, but he’d never heard him admit to it. His quiet and uncomplaining resilience had always marked him out from the rest of them. While Ralph kicked against the incompetence of his superiors and Hugh moaned on ceaselessly about the lack of recognition afforded to the artillery, Freddie had always just got on with the grim business of putting people back together.

“Maybe Elliott was right. Maybe I am a moralist at heart.”

Under other circumstances Max would have sought to buoy up his friend, to make him see sense. Selfishly, the prospect of an accomplice prevailed. It was good to have Freddie back on board. He reached for one of the phones on his desk and asked Maria to hold his calls.

Freddie seemed genuinely shocked by the speed of developments, and not nearly as skeptical as Max had been about Elliott’s hypothesis that the murders might be the work of someone looking to frame the British for the crimes, some spy within their own ranks, or a Maltese fifth columnist.

“It’s possible, I suppose. I can see it. He could have planted the shoulder tab in her hand.”

“Or they. That was another of Elliott’s suggestions.”

“Why’s he being so helpful?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you tell him about this detective …?”

“Busuttil? No, and I don’t plan to until we know which side of the fence Elliott’s really sitting on.”

Not for the first time that day, Josef Busuttil found himself running for shelter. As if the running weren’t bad enough already—a stark reminder of just how rapidly his body was betraying him with age—all that the finish line had to offer was some gloomy ill-ventilated tunnel hacked out of the rock. He hated confined spaces. He hated them more when you had to share them with a swarming mass of humanity.

Fortunately, this shelter was considerably larger than most. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the next hour or so upright, pressed tight with a bunch of strangers, like anchovies in a tin. The tunnel was wide, and judging from the run of paraffin lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling, it stretched far beneath Valetta. The walls on either side of the central gangway bristled with iron bedsteads and wooden bunks. Here and there, niches had been hollowed out of the walls, some small, some large enough to accommodate a whole tribe of relations. Wherever possible, curtains had been rigged up to offer some degree of privacy.

The smell, as always, hit Josef with the force of a blow, clutching at his throat—a fetid cocktail of paraffin fumes, garlic, sweat, and other human excretions.

For those who had been bombed out of their homes, this was now their permanent residence. They were easy to spot; they were the ones already in place, staring at the plug of newcomers crowding the entrance. Some waved them deeper into the tunnel, welcoming them. Others were more mistrustful, or simply too weary to care. Outside, the bombs started to fall. The noise was met by a low murmur of prayers.

Josef made his way to the far end of the tunnel, closing his mind to the musty pressure of the walls, challenging the fear he had always carried in him. Small children darted about, lost in their games. Old women, beads in hand, said the rosary before ramshackle shrines to the Virgin. Mothers poked at pans on sputtering Primus stoves. This is what we have become, he thought. This is what they have turned us into: a race of cowering cave dwellers.

He found himself staring at a pretty and petite young woman perched on a bed, reading from a book to her two children. The girl was curled up on the lean mattress, head in her mother’s lap. The boy was seated on the hard floor, looking bored, eager to be elsewhere. Josef wondered what their story was, wondered if they would all live to tell it. The woman caught his eye and gestured him over, into their world. He hesitated. What kind of woman would make such an overture to a stranger when her husband was absent? A woman who had lost her husband, it occurred to him. But she was gesturing at the other bed now, and the prospect of taking the weight off his feet won through.

“You look tired.”