'What's your interest in his case, Mr Sandham?'
Sandham shrugged. 'Something stinks.'
'Meaning what?'
'I'll tell you when I've found out.'
'When my father's dead and buried?'
'I can't say.'
'What stinks?'
'Sorry, Mr Curwen… but you'll hear from me when I know, I promise you that.'
'I don't know where to go except to you,' Jack said simply. 'That's the hell of it, and time's running out.'
•* •
Jack drove back to D amp; C.
Janice looked at him curiously, then gave him the message that his mother had rung. He telephoned her. He cradled the telephone on his shoulder, his elbows were on his desk top, his hands in front of his mouth. Janice noted his attempt at privacy.
He heard about the visitor and the questions. He told her that he had been to the Foreign Office, that there wasn't any good news. He rang off abruptly. He was sagging over his desk.
'Why don't you go home?'
He looked up. He saw young Villiers staring down at him.
'Why should I go home?'
'Because you look knackered.'
'I'm fine.'
'You're not, and you should go home.'
Jack was shouting. 'If I say I'm fine, then I'm bloody fine. And I don't want any one bloody tip-toeing round me.'
'Just concerned, old boy.'
'Well, don't be fucking concerned.'
Janice and Lucille studied their typewriters. Villiers flushed, flexed his fingers. His father had told him everything that he needed to know about Jack Curwen, that he had been two years and one term at university and left on a disciplinary matter, that a drop-out added up to a cheap work horse for D amp; C Ltd, that Jack Curwen was lucky to have his job however dedicated and able he might be.
'Nice to know that nothing's wrong,' he said evenly.
•**
Because he had a good nose, Jimmy Sandham's diplomatic career had long ago been stunted. He said what he felt it right to say and then managed a quaint look of hurt when his superiors rewarded him with lack of advancement.
As a young man, in Teheran, at a time when British factories were on overtime and weekend shifts to turn out Chieftain tanks for the Shah's army, Sandham had briefed a visiting journalist on the help with direct interrogation methods that British Intelligence were giving to Savak. In Amman he had filed a formal report to the ambassador stating that the representatives of British construction companies were buying their contract to build a hydro plant with back handers; two of the representatives were at that time putting up at the ambassador's residence.
He couldn't be fired, but he could be disliked, and he could watch his promotion prospects going down the plug hole.
It was eight years since the industrious Jimmy Sandham had last been posted abroad. He never complained, never sought explanations as younger men leap-frogged him. But the word was out. If there was a bad smell in a section then keep Sandham's nose at arm's length.
The Carew case was a thoroughly nasty smell to Jimmy Sandham, and the error of Peter Furneaux, assistant secretary, had been to let him within a mile of it.
The friend Sandham had telephoned had been his best man at the English church in Bangkok. The friend thought the day spiced with pleasure because the ambassador had been the guest of honour eleven days after receiving the query from the crown auditors concerning his wife's frequent and private use of the Rolls. Jimmy Sandham's bride had been his friend's secretary.
That had been a long time ago, but they had stayed as close as two men can who meet each other for a couple of meals a year and exchange cards at Christmas. The friend worked from a nondescript tower block on the south side of the Thames, home base of the Secret Intelligence Service.
The friend loved Sandham for his pig-headed obstinacy, and made certain they were never seen together.
They sat on a bench in Battersea Park, shielded by a towering shrub from the nearest path. The fun fair hadn't opened for the summer season, the kids were at school, it was too short of pickings for the tramps, too draughty for the lovers.
'Furneaux's a total arsehole,' the friend said.
'I get this garbage from Furneaux about 'deep water', and we have a file with Carew's real name on it. Furneaux didn't put the file back into records, it's locked in his own safe.'
'To keep your prying eyes off it.'
'What would I have seen?'
'Enough to whet your appetite.'
Sandham grinned. 'What about your file?'
'Enough for you to choke on.'
Sandham stared into his friend's face. 'Is James Carew one of ours?'
'Fighting talk, Jimmy. You should know, there's a D-notice.'
'What else?'
'I reckon there'd be Official Secrets Act, Section I. Closed court. Ten years minimum, could be fifteen… You want cream on your raspberries? There's a fair bit of bad blood in the Service over Carew. Desk men say it's entirely his own fault, leg men say that once a man's on the team then it's marriage vows, for ever. Trouble is that the Service has changed since Carew started out. Desk men count, leg men are dinosaurs. Evaluation and interpretation is the name of the game, and you need an Oxbridge degree for that. Running around on the ground's out of fashion.'
'And the desk men'll let him hang?'
'He had a fairy godmother, but that's over. They got him out the last time, second time's one too many. The leg men say that Carew wasn't asked to do what he did.'
'So you bastards are going to write him off.'
'Come off it, Jimmy… Are we going to go to Pretoria and tell them that a staffer, a wallah on the pension scheme, is driving the scoot car from a daylight bombing. He was there to infiltrate, provide the raw intelligence for assessments. He wasn't there to lead the bloody charge down the Johannesburg High Street. I tell you what we think happened. We think he had infiltrated the A.N.C., just inserted himself under the skin. We think the A.N.C. learned to trust him and one day, bad luck for Carew, they trusted him enough to do a little job for them. We think the poor creep probably didn't know what he was into.'
Sandham said bitterly, 'I thought it was holy writ that you lot looked after your own.'
The friend laughed out loud. 'That's gone with the ark.'
'What sort of chap is Carew?'
'Brilliant. You want to know what he said when he was lifted. 'Let's have a bit of dignity, boys.' That's what he said to the four guys with him, and they'd just knocked half Jo'burg over. He'll keep his secret. Our secret.' The friend looked at Sandham keenly. 'You won't forget the ten years minimum and the D-notice, Jimmy?'
'It's the nastiest story I've ever heard.'
'It's real politik.'
' The politicians have backed this, leaving him to hang?'
'Who needs to tell them about the big bad world?'
'When he left his wife…'
