were now bored with him, as if they had other business to be about and could spare Mattie no more time.
So simple to speak the words. The hammering of new pain had ceased, and the tape-recorder was turning, and the investigator was sitting at the table, and the guards had pulled back to the wall and there was the rank sweet smoke of their cigarettes.
At that moment there was no thought in the mind of Mattie Furniss other than the killing of the rising pain. The pain stayed where it was. The guards came from behind and they unstrapped the thongs that held down his legs and his wrists.
They let him he free on the bed.
He must be a pitiful sight. Not Mattie Furniss at all. He had not washed, not after having been brought back from the yard the previous evening. His hair was unkempt and filthy, his lips were parched grey and cracked, his eyes were big and starring and racing. They had broken him. He curled his knees to his chest and tried to control the pain that was all over his body. Broken, but free from the beating.
'Well done, Mr Furniss. That was the hardest, Mr Furniss, mid the worst is now past.'
Mattie talked about Century.
He could see from the eyes of the man that little that he said was not previously known. He spoke in a slow wheezing monotone. There was no character, no wit, he was a tour guide at the end of a long season. The investigator had pulled up his chair close to Mattie, and he was hunched forward so that his face dominated Mattie. Sometimes the investigator repeated what Mattie had said as if that way he ensured that the microphone picked up the words with greater clarity. The investigator took no notes, to have written on a notepad would have deflected the concentration that now settled over Mattie.
He talked about the budget that was given to Iran Desk, and he talked about the resources that could be made available to Iran Desk from the Station Officers in Ankara and Baghdad and Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Bahrain.
All the old loyalties, all he stood for, beaten from him.
He heard the drone of his own voice… he'd done them well. He'd stayed silent longer than they could have counted on. There was nothing that he should be ashamed of. He'd given them time to save the field men.
He was given a glass of water. He held it in his two hands, and the water slopped down his shirt front when he tried to drink, and his lips were rigid like plastic sheeting… he'd won them time. They should be thankful for what that precious time had cost him.
Mattie gave the name. '… His business is on Bazar e Abbas Abad.'
He could see him clearly. He was hugely fat, sat on a reinforced chair in the back office behind a cave of merchan-dise and held court over cigars and coffee. He was a con-noisseur of carpets and a collector of gossip, and he was a field agent of Century from far back. Mattie had known the merchant for twenty years, and it was Mattie's joke each time they met that he couldn't get his arms round his old friend when they hugged a greeting. There was gossip to be had from the merchant about the rivalries of the army colonels, about the inter-factional fighting amongst the Mullahs, about the industrialists squabbling for foreign exchange with which to buy overseas plant. Every time they met then Mattie laughed, and sometimes the choicest of the gossip, if it were of matters sexual, could even bring a smile to those witheringly dull fellows from the Agency across the ocean. He had known the merchant since he had been a liaison officer in Tehran, and there was a rug in front of the fire in the cottage at Bibury that had cost him an arm and a leg, and the last time he had been seriously angry with Harriet had been when she had put a wet pine log on that fire that had spat a knot on to the rug. Mattie named the merchant, and they brought a damp towel to put across the soles of his feet to quieten the anger of the pain.
Another name. '… he works in the Harbourmaster's office at Bandar Abbas.'
When he was Station Officer in Tehran he had once made the long road journey south, and he had been sure that he had thrown off the tail of the S A V A K agents that was supposed to be with him, and he had gone to the home of the official from the Harbourmaster's office. The man had been recruited by a previous Station Officer, and until the Revolution had been of minimal importance, and maintained only because he did not want money. He was pure gold now, a field agent in the office which observed the comings and goings of merchant shipping in and out of the country's chief port. He had gone to the man's small brick house, he had sweated and sat on a floor rug and wondered why the ventilation chimney seemed so inadequate in the blasting Gulf heat. On that occasion, after the wife had scurried in with a tray and glasses holding diluted lime juice and scurried out, the official had told Mattie that he was a democrat, and therefore opposed to the regime of the Shah of Shahs. The Revolution had come, the official had found no democracy from the clerics, he had stayed on the list of active agents and he had begun to grow in importance.
A small, frightened man, who believed that the work he carried out for Mattie was a short step in the long road to bring parliamentary rule to his country. A sandwich with sweet cheese was brought for the prisoner.
Another name given. '… he runs a repair workshop in Tabriz for lorries, and he also has contracts to keep the Revolutionary Guards' vehicles on the road.'
A basic and human individual, a man who might have been in Mattie's eyes almost a European. The engineer was the sort of fellow who was always popular, perpetually in demand, and he worked all the hours that his God gave him. The engineer had been recruited in Turkey. A good and active Station Officer, long before this academic boy in the job now, had sought him out in a cafe and talked to him when he was over for the collection of a broken-down lorry that would need a new gear box. That Station Officer had been lucky. The son of the engineer's close friend had been shot in the old gaol in Tabriz after a cursory trial by the Komiteh. The engineer had been ready for recruitment. The engineer's pay went into an account at the Etibank in Van, and it was Mattie's business to know that the credit mounted and was never reduced.
Perhaps there was a day on some far horizon in his mind when the engineer would drive out his truck, with his family hidden amongst a cargo. It was useful, the information provided by the engineer. In any time that approached normality it would have been second grade, but they were not normal times, and Iran Desk were pretty damn thankful to have anything coming out of Iran. Mattie had been given a glass of water and a damp towel again soothed the soles of his feet.
It was a good hotel. Charlie could sleep on the pavements with the dossers when he had to, not for the sake of it. The room was?66.50 a night and the best that Leeds could provide. He locked the door behind him. He went along the landing, he was carrying his rucksack by the straps, the two straps twisted around his wrist. He wore his cleanest slacks, a clean shirt and a navy blazer.
There was a man at the end of the corridor, in jeans and a sweatshirt, polishing hard at the muzzle of a fire hose. He didn't look at Charlie and went on with his polishing. Pretty damn obvious. .. Charlie understood… What could be so compelling about getting a shine on to a fire hose nozzle?
A lift was waiting for him.
He came out into the hotel lobby. Too crowded for him to spot the watchers, and he wasn't hanging around to search them out. He knew what he was at. He strode across the lobby, not looking right and not looking left, went as though he belonged and hadn't a care in the world. He pushed his way through the revolving doors, then hesitated. It was colder up in the north than in London. There were taxis waiting in line, engines off. He paused on the pavement.
He moved sharply. He ducked back through the swing doors and across the lobby to the staircase.
He went up the stairs three at a time. Six flights to climb.
He went up the stairs like there was no tomorrow, and took the last flight that was to the roof, and he put his shoulder against the stiffness of the fire escape door.
He stepped out on to the flat roof. He skirted the air conditioning machinery. He had no interest in a fine view over factories or the brick terraces or the munificence of the Victorian civic buildings and churches.
He went to the edge of the roof. He looked down on to the street below. He could see the line of parked taxis. His eyes roved. He saw a green saloon that was behind the taxis.
He could see that there were two people in the front seats, and there was the exhaust showing that the engine was idling. He saw that the man who had been polishing the nozzle of the fire hose was now across the street, and his lips were moving and there was no one close enough to hear him.
In his bath, Charlie had remembered that he was a friend of Mr Furniss.
He was going to piss on them.
•**
'Where the hell is he?'
