Comrade Charlie

Blackstone shrugged. ‘About a hundred yards; maybe more.’

‘A little more, I’d say,’ corrected Charlie. ‘Nearer two hundred, in fact. Why walk two hundred yards from one building to another on the off-chance that the Ariane drawings would be ready for return? Why didn’t you telephone to ask?’

Blackstone felt himself becoming hot. He gave another uncertain movement and said: ‘I just didn’t think of it. I knew the drawings were there and on the spur of the moment decided to call by.’

‘Practically an hour after you should have gone home?’

Perspiration began on Blackstone’s upper lip, making it itch and he wanted to wipe it off but it would have made him look nervous. He said: ‘We can work flexi-hours here if we choose. Anyway, I didn’t really know what the time was. I was trying to see Mr Springley. I’ve applied for a transfer to the project.’

The reasonable explanation that had been produced before, remembered Charlie. He said: ‘So it wasn’t such a spur-of-the-moment decision after all?’

Unable to stand the itching any longer Blackstone moved his hand quickly across his face. He said: ‘It began that way: it was only when I was at the section that the idea of trying to see Mr Springley occurred to me.’

‘Spur of the moment yet you gave it sufficient thought to take along some spare drawing tubes in case the others had been mislaid?’

‘I’d kept the unwanted ones by my desk. It was automatic to pick them up. I didn’t positively think of it.’

Charlie was finding Blackstone a difficult person to assess. The man’s demeanour had changed from the almost aggressive reassurance with which the interview had started to this sweated discomfort, but it would be wrong to read too much into that. He said: ‘If you wanted to see the project head, why didn’t you go to his office? Why were you in the main communal drawing area?’

‘I wasn’t sure where his office was.’

‘You’d been in the section before, to deliver the Ariane blueprints.’

‘But not to Mr Springley’s office. It wasn’t he who’d asked for them.’ He’d been very wrong to imagine this was going to be an easy meeting, decided Blackstone. And more mistaken still to think that this unkempt man needn’t be taken seriously.

‘So what were you doing?’

‘Looking for someone to direct me.’

‘You must have known everyone would have gone home?’

‘I told you, there’s a flexi-hour system. Only no one was working that evening.’

‘Crossing from one building to another, as you did, you must have seen a lot of people leaving?’

Blackstone tried to make a careless gesture. ‘A few.’

Neither convincing nor unconvincing, thought Charlie. But then people more often than not did things without a completely logical explanation that could be examined later. Deciding to change the direction of the questioning to see if he could further disconcert the man, Charlie said: ‘You’ve gone through security clearance?’

‘Yes.’

‘And signed the Official Secrets Act?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Blackstone again. What the hell was the man getting at now!

‘I know of cases of people being jailed for twenty, even thirty years for contravening the Act.’

‘What are you talking about!’ Blackstone felt loose-stomached now, plunging into panicked depression and uncaring how he appeared to the other man.

‘Penalties, for contravening the Official Secrets Act,’ said Charlie quietly. Was Blackstone nervous enough to make a slip?

‘I haven’t contravened anything!’ protested Blackstone. ‘I told you how it happened! I didn’t mean any harm!’ Incredibly, for the first time, Blackstone’s mind went properly beyond the money he’d been getting, fully to consider what could happen to him if he were found out. He remembered the inquiry the night he’d been caught not as an inquiry at all. Ridiculous though it now was to contemplate, it had all seemed like some sort of game, a contest between himself and men he knew and had worked with. But that’s all. Not once had he considered there being a penalty, at the end of it. But now he did. He thought about thirty years and didn’t regard what was going on here as anything like a game. This was deadly serious: deadly, horrifyingly serious. Thirty years, he thought again.

Charlie’s feet began to hurt, which he’d known they would when he’d walked from the ferry terminal to save the three-pound taxi fare. He crossed one leg over the other and slid his fingers inside his sagging shoe, massaging the ache. He said: ‘What time did you enter the secure section?’

The bastard was going to pick on and on, wearing him down, until he made a mistake! Stick to what happened, Blackstone told himself: don’t try to invent lies he might forget, under pressure. He said: ‘I wasn’t paying any particular attention to the time. Maybe five thirty. Maybe later.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Charlie.

‘What is?’

‘According to the security report, you were challenged in the main drawing office at six thirty-five. You’d been there for a whole hour!’

Dear God, what was he going to do! The man obviously didn’t believe him. He’d say so, soon: make some open accusation. Thirty years! Desperately Blackstone said: ‘It could have been later than five thirty.’

‘Let’s give you the benefit of a lot of doubt,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s say you didn’t go in until six. That’s still half an hour. What were you doing alone in the building for half an hour?’

‘I went to the lavatory.’

‘The lavatory!’

‘I had the need to go when I got to the building.’

‘So you hid in the lavatory for thirty minutes?’

‘I didn’t hide!’ denied Blackstone. ‘I went to the lavatory.’ Deflect him, thought Blackstone: he had to do something, say something, anything, to deflect the man to get the pressure off!

Blackstone was weakening, Charlie decided: on the ropes and weakening. But there still wasn’t anything positively incriminating. Charlie said: ‘Are you keen to get on the secret project?’

Blackstone groped for a handkerchief and made as if to blow his nose, using the pretext to wipe away the build-up of sweat and to delay his answer as long as possible. Stick to the truth as much as possible, he told himself. He said: ‘I want very much to be part of it.’

‘Why?’ demanded Charlie.

‘Secret work is always different: exciting. I like working on challenging projects.’

‘What about the extra money?’

Careful! thought Blackstone. He said: ‘It does carry a higher salary scale. And it’s always nice to earn extra money.’

Charlie lowered his foot back to the floor, moving his toes inside the capacious Hush Puppies. His foot still ached. ‘So!’ he said briskly. ‘You decide to show how conscientious you are. Around the time most other people were going home you enter a classified, secure working area hoping to see the project manager to talk about a transfer. But then you go into a toilet and stay there all the time, so that when you come out Springley has gone home, like everyone else. Making everything completely pointless.’

‘I didn’t have any alternative,’ said Blackstone stubbornly. ‘I was ill.’

‘You didn’t say that before.’

Blackstone’s shirt was glued to his back by sweat and he had consciously to press one hand against the other in his lap to prevent the shake being noticeable. He was gripped by despair, finding it difficult to hold in his mind which answers he’d given to which questions: difficult to get his mind to function at all. He said: ‘It’s not something you talk about, is it?’

‘If you’re asked to explain being on premises where you’ve no right to be I would think it’s something you talk about,’ insisted Charlie.

Blackstone shrugged, not knowing an answer. ‘I didn’t.’ He knew he couldn’t go on much longer. Soon he was going to say something, admit something, and it was all going to be over. Everything. Thirty years: he was going to go to prison for thirty years.

Time for a sharp confrontation, gauged Charlie. He said: ‘You’re very nervous, Henry. If this is all the innocent