I shrugged my not-so-big shoulders non-committally, and then, deliberately pitching it high, said, “The preliminary work would cost you a hundred pounds, plus expenses. Money in advance. This kind of job takes up a lot of time. Half the fee returned if I’m unsuccessful, but the expenses stand.”
Money talk usually sorted them out. Without hesitation, he took out a gold-tipped wallet, eight months’ pregnant, and counted out twenty five-pound notes, recounted them, and passed them to me and, to show perhaps that he was reading me as I read him, he said, “This assignment is perfectly legitimate.”
“Who recommended you to come to me?”
He hesitated and made no effort to cover it. Then with a slight convulsion of the gross baby face which I took for a smile, he said, “I work for a very big international organization. My chairman – who knows of my concern for this girl – suggested you. Not that he knows you. But he has a friend called Manston who told him that you were the best in London.”
I didn’t even let an eyelid flicker. But if this Stebelson touched even remotely the edges of Manston’s world then I knew that I hadn’t overcharged him.
After I had ushered him through into the outer office for Wilkins to see out, I went back to my desk.
Manston could have recommended me, maybe. But I didn’t see it. I’d worked with him a few times, but not on anything which got publicity.
So, just to make sure, on what could, after all, be quite a simple job, I called a man I knew at the Yard and said Katerina Saxmann and Hans Stebelson to him. Unless it was vital I always liked to keep on the right side of the boys and, when I couldn’t, I always tried to be polite about it. I called them or they called me. Friendly. But it only needed one step out of line to prove just how deep friendship with the law could be. Deep, deep and far under. And that was only the law. Beyond the law, you could go deeper still, deep and dark, down below the anemone and coral line where the big security sharks lurked. Down there they’ve never heard of friendship. Some of them screened their own wives before they kissed them goodnight.
This man said no to both Katerina Saxmann and Hans Stebelson. That was at five o’clock.
Five minutes later I left. I stopped in the outer office. Wilkins was sitting behind her typewriter, darning one of her father’s socks.
I said, “I know it’s high season, so I’ll bet you five pounds that you can’t get me a room at the Albion, Brighton – overlooking the entrance to the pier. For tonight and maybe a few more.”
She nodded, raised the sock to her mouth and bit off the end of the wool to free her needle.
“Phone me at the flat.”
She nodded again.
I went down the stairs and stood in the doorway, looking out into Northumberland Avenue. A girl went by in a summer frock, and there was a long ladder in the back of her right stocking. Two pigeons, doing a courtship display in the middle of the road, made a Ford Consul slow almost to a stop. From the angry movement of the driver’s lips I could tell that he didn’t think it was love that made the world go round. The dropping sun winked redly on my brass plate, which said – Carver and Wilkins. It had just been Carver until, in a bad year just after I’d begun, Wilkins had insisted on emptying the old tea-caddy on the mantelshelf in Circus Street and coming to the rescue – with a look in her eyes which had dared me to show even a two-second flash of gratitude. Without saying anything to her I had had the plate changed.
I went down to Miggs’s place for a half-hour workout. Behind his garage, Miggs had a small gymnasium. It was a couple of guineas a session – dear – but a lot of people went. Miggs had been a sergeant in the Commandos. I had a pint with him afterwards and then got the tube home.
Home was a flat near the Tate Gallery: a bedroom, sitting-room, bathroom and kitchen, nicely, and expensively for the most part, furnished, but somehow always damned untidy. From the sitting-room window I could see the river.
It was a quarter past six when I opened the door.
He was sitting in my deep club armchair, wearing a raincoat, and holding a glass of my whisky and soda in his hand, but having the decency to smoke his own cigarettes. I never asked him how he got in. Doors don’t present any problems to them. He was new to me.
I said, “Nice evening,” and went and fixed myself a whisky and soda.
He said, “Feels like thunder to me.”
I went to the window and looked out. It was a warm evening and a light breeze brought me a tangy whiff of river mud and petrol exhaust. The tide was running up and three barges went by low in the water, like sodden black sausages. So far as I could see, he hadn’t got anyone parked outside. I sat on the window-seat and lit a cigarette.
Blowing smoke, like a goldfish breathing, I said, “Well?”
He said, “If Manston hadn’t been on holiday, they would have sent him.”
“Nice of them.” But I knew they would never have sent Manston. He didn’t run errands.
“He’s got a high regard for you. In fact, the whole Department has – so I’m told.”
“Told?”
“I don’t run with them normally.”
He yawned, flicked ash at a cigarette tray and missed it, and then with a coy look said, “Stebelson.”
I said, “The liaison has been tightened up. I only phoned the Yard at five. I suppose that’s the result of the recent stink about co-operation between police and security. I’m glad to see it.”
“Stebelson,” he repeated.
Now,
