After about four miles we pulled sharp left into a narrow driveway and the headlights picked up the façade of a low, grey stone house with the shutters drawn across all its windows. The car lights were flicked off before I could get a good look at it.
I was taken around to a side entrance and ushered by my friend into an old-fashioned kitchen at the end of a long corridor.
I found myself facing Sutcliffe. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of cold beef and salad in front of him.
He looked up and beyond me, to the young man, and said, “All right, Nick. I’ll ring when I want you.”
I heard the kitchen door shut behind me. Sutcliffe waved me to a seat at the end of the table, facing him. There was a bottle of whisky, a siphon, and a glass waiting there. I sat down and helped myself. Sutcliffe pushed salad into his mouth, chewed, and studied me. I didn’t like the way he looked at me. But then I never did.
He cleared his salad and said, “Start from the beginning – and go right through, omitting nothing. Nothing.”
I lit a cigarette, sipped my whisky, and began, giving him everything from the moment I had arrived in Venice until the moment I had been picked up in Innsbruck, everything, that was, which was of professional interest. I didn’t go into any details of my private affairs concerning Vérité, or of my feelings about Katerina, but he got everything else, and he listened like a sphinx, just chewing gently to himself at cold meat and salad, and occasionally taking a sip at his wine. I knew that when I had finished, the questions would come, and I was not even tempted to make any guesses at them. Guesses never worked with Sutcliffe. And all the time I grew more and more uncomfortable because I suddenly realized that, although he was using me now, had used me in the past, and might use me again, he didn’t really like me. And as long as I didn’t carry the establishment stamp he never would. Plonk that on me for keeps and he would loyally make an effort to tolerate me.
He said, “This white-haired man at the Chalet Papagei – are you sure he had an artificial leg?”
“Vérité Latour-Mesmin confirmed it.”
“Which one are you in love with? Her – or the Katerina girl?”
I didn’t answer right away. I gave him a dirty look and myself another shot of whisky.
“Which?”
I knew the tone. This was Sutcliffe on the job. There was no question of this being an affable after dinner chat. He was all cut and kill to get the thing he wanted and God help whoever got in his way.
“Katerina,” I said. “And I don’t want to see her finish up in a lake.”
“Naturally. But – if the timing works that way – she may do just that.”
“First things first, eh?”
It didn’t rile him.
He said, “Unfortunately, yes. So let’s come straight to the point. From a professional point of view you’ve got one flaw. It puts a practical limit to your usefulness. You involve yourself personally. That means under emotional stress you cease to obey the reins. If our moment for taking action has to be timed later than the elimination of one of these girls, you’d never accept it.”
“You mean that I’ve got a warm little heart throbbing under my rumpled shirt? That I shouldn’t care – so long as some dirty political tangle is smoothed out – that some girl finishes up with minnows chewing her eyeballs?”
“Precisely.”
Old Spiegel could have made the same sound with his Toledo blade.
I stood up. “You’re dead right. That’s the way I am. I don’t like those things.”
He looked up at me and took a cigar case from his pocket. His eyes were like dry pebbles. He pulled out a cigar and inspected it. It was certainly Havana, and probably a Ramon Allones. He ran the cigar under his nose to get the bouquet.
“Quite,” he said. “And that’s why you’re fired.”
“Well, well,” I said, “soft-hearted old unreliable me. And no union to take up my case.” I let soda hiss gently into my glass. “So perhaps you’ll ask old Nicky boy to drive me to the nearest hotel.”
He struck a match and lit his cigar, and he took a lot of care doing it.
When it was going, he said, “It’s not as simple as that. You’ve served your purpose. I’m grateful. But you know a great deal. You’re a security risk, whether you like it or not. Nick and I are going to drive you to Munich. Casalis is there. He and Nick will take you to London. When you reach London your passport will be taken from you for a month – things should have cleared up by then. I’m sure you won’t mind. That, in fact, you’ll see the good sense of it all. Also you will hand over the little pill case you got from Frau Spiegel. Now sit down and finish your whisky.”
He reached out a hand and pressed a bell push somewhere under the table for Nick. He was smiling in a positively fatherly way now, because he had it all sewn up. Carver had done a good job, within his limits. Carver would now be isolated, sealed off ... and somewhere not fifty miles away in the hills was a lake into which, for all he cared, Lottie or Katerina might be pitched if it proved expedient. I saw her then in my mind as I had first seen her on Brighton pier, misty blue eyes and the wind in her golden hair; I saw her face below mine in the back of the car up on the downs, saw the loose drift of sand on her legs at Melita ... and there was a swift, sudden ache in me for her. No matter what she was, we’d never had a chance to prove what
