It would have been normal to have wanted to pay your respects, wouldn’t it?
There had been something between them, hadn’t there? “Right. Thank you. That really does close the case, doesn’t it?” She must have misinterpreted my waiting expression. “Do I owe you any more money?”
“No. Not at all. In fact it didn’t take me a full week. I owe you…”
She was waving it off. “Goodbye, Mr McRae. I hope your business does well. Good hunting and all that.”
We shook fingers and I watched her disappear down the stairs, clacking musically all the way. I went back to my desk, put my feet up and pulled her glass over.
It was barely touched. There was lipstick round the edge. I covered her impression with mine and knocked back the remains. I could taste her through the Scotch.
I topped up my own glass and sipped and wondered why I was being lied to. This didn’t smell right. Her act was wrong. There was no grief; there are stiff upper lips and then there are people who just don’t care. It could be that I was simply confirming what she’d known all along; she had already come to terms with it. But the natural reaction would have been to want to don the black rags and the veil, visit the grave, shed a few last tears, put it all behind you. Women never miss a chance to act a part. Even when they’re lying, they make a better job of it than this. A dab of the eyes, a downward glance, a question or two about the funeral was all it would have taken.
It was also a bit too bloody convenient for my liking. The man I most wanted to talk to in all the world about my missing moments gets killed by an old bomb.
His lover doesn’t go to one of the big detective agencies; she asks me to do the checking. And there’s no body, not even a headstone. Bloody convenient.
TEN
I woke in the early hours, roasting on the spit of my troubled dreams, and overwhelmed with the familiar image. The woman is lying face down. Blood oozing from the back of her head and gathering in a pool below it. There’s another pool under her hips. I’m holding a bayonet. Red drips from it and from my hands. The blood feels hot and slick. I’m pleading with her not to lie in the blood. That she’ll get cold. And then I hear the running feet…
I got up and made some tea and had a fag to calm me down. It was nearly light anyway. So I sat and watched the winter sun edge up over the rooftops. It didn’t warm me. I shouldn’t follow the stuff in the newspapers. I certainly shouldn’t go on a sodding tour of inspection. Serves me right for being a ghoul. With a brain as precarious as mine, I need to avoid inflammatory situations.
I decided to cook some porridge, a comfort food that reminded me of home and my mother. It was also cheap. I was on the point of excavating the grey lava from the bottom of the pot when a little voice took me unawares and banished my night time blues.
“Knock, knock. Is there enough for two?” Val said.
I was inexplicably happy to see her beaming face, and grinned at her. “Only if you have it with salt. I’m not letting you English put sugar on my porridge.”
She screwed up her face and came into my room. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Its end curled round her neck. She looked just fine.
“I’ll try it. Why not? We eat anything now, don’t we? Horses, yum, yum. Powdered eggs, goody, goody.”
I laughed. “I’ll get my mum to send us some haggis.”
“That’s where I draw the line.”
“One of my guys caught a snake in the desert and ate it.”
“Yuk! Was he sick?”
“Violently. I think he ate the wrong end.”
I lifted up the top of the fold-down table and sat out two bowls on the red Formica. When I make porridge I always make too much, so it stretched easily. I spooned the steaming sludge into the bowls.
“Watch, mind. There’s nothing hotter.” She flicked her ponytail back. “It’s nice like that,” I said staring appreciatively.
She blushed and tugged at it. “It’s too long. Drives me mad. I’m thinking of having it all hacked off. Like those magazines.”
“Don’t do that! You’ve got lovely hair.”
She smiled. “OK. I’ll keep it. For you.”
I took a chance. “There’s an old Scottish custom that says if you share porridge with someone, you must share a secret.”
She looked wary. “A likely story.”
I pressed on. “I’ve met you twice now and I don’t know anything about you, except your name. I don’t even know where you live.”
She shook her head and laid a scalding spoon of porridge back down. “Don’t make it hard, Danny. I told you, I don’t want to get involved. I just want to be able to drop in and have a natter. I don’t want the third degree.” Her eyes were determined. I was scared she’d up and leave. And what did it matter where she lived or what she did? “OK, pal. Just curious.” I smiled.
She sighed. “Look, there’s this bloke. He hurt me real bad. I’m trying to sort things out. Maybe then I’ll tell you the whole thing, ok?”
I knew it. We’re all bastards. Was she living with him? Would she leave him? Not if I pushed her. I changed the subject. I told her about Kate Graveney and the strange coincidence of Tony Caldwell. Val seemed rapt and let her porridge go cold. Or maybe it was the salt. She had her elbows on the table and her hands under her fine jaw. Her eyes were big and dark, weighing everything.
“Why did she need you to find Mrs Caldwell? She could have got anybody to ask at his club. Women like her know lots of men. It wouldn’t have been hard.” I noticed the little bit of spite in her voice as she spoke of women like her.
“It worried me too. Like it’s all being done for my benefit. To keep me away.”
I told Val about Liza Caldwell’s comments, how Caldwell had probably told SOE not to divulge his whereabouts. Especially to me.
It was then that Val came up with the mad idea, and I felt it take root in my brain like the seeds of a fever.
“Won’t SOE have files on you and Tony Caldwell?”
“Yes…?”
Her eyes were gleaming. “Why don’t you get in and see for yourself?”
“You mean break in?!”
“Would it be hard?” she asked, all innocence. She lit a fag.
I thought about the layout of Baker Street. It had grown like a rabbit warren to take up virtually the whole street. But I knew the records on agents were kept centrally at number 64. I also knew they were closing the whole shebang down.
They didn’t need our kind of talents anymore. So security might not be as tight as it used to be. If I could get past the guards at the door and then hide till…
“This is daft! Completely daft! You’re a madwoman, so you are, Valerie Brown.
And you’re turning me as mad as you.”
“I’m crazy,” she agreed and blew a smoke ring. “But I’m not mad. Come on, eat up. I’m taking you to feed the ducks. Got any old bread? Better not take any of this stuff, or they’ll sink!”
She didn’t finish her porridge. I dunked the two bowls in water so they wouldn’t set like concrete. Then she dragged me out. The weather was kinder; broken clouds and a South westerly. We chased a bus and leapt on as it slowly eased away from the stop. We landed breathless on the platform, faces aflame and laughing. I saw nothing but kind eyes from the passengers. We must have looked like lovers.
We got off at Hyde Park Corner and ambled into the park. The rolling slopes were winter drab, and the green seemed to have leeched into the Serpentine.
Bare-armed trees stood around the flat water as though they’d been stuck in the ground upside down. There
