I turned, fat drink in hand. ‘To forget him. Approve?’
She nodded.
At that moment the telephone rang. I reached out for it, looked at her and said, ‘Permesso?’ She nodded.
I picked up the receiver.
A voice at the other end said, ‘Mr Carver?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Rex Carver?’
‘You don’t have to be so formal, you know it bloody is.’
‘Report here immediately.’
‘Can’t I finish my drink?’
There was a click at the other end.
I looked at Gloriana and she looked at me.
‘The dark clouds might,’ I said, ‘have rolled away and it could have turned out to be a wonderful evening. As it is, you’re stuck with three dozen oysters and a bottle of Montrachet.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To the Inquisitors. To the dark shrine of Security. To the devildom of men without hearts. Into the crêpe-festooned shadows of the underworld, where all is cold and bleak and there is a human sacrifice every hour on the hour.’
‘You’re tight, love.’ She sounded genuinely sympathetic.
‘I know. But the moment their door closes on me, the cold inside will shrive every particle of alcoholic warmth from my blood, every soft and comforting whisky fume from my brain.’
She giggled, stood up and came and took the glass from me. ‘Don’t have that. You don’t need it. Certainly not for yourself. You’re not even worried about yourself. I know you well enough by now. Who is it? Who is it you’re really worried about?’
‘Certainly not your bloody brother.’
‘That’s good, because he wouldn’t be damned well worth it.’
I took the glass from her and drained it.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It could be my last.’
She took the empty glass from me, put it down, and then reached her arms around me and gave me a hug.
‘You’re nice,’ she said, and kissed me, good and hard and lovingly. Then, releasing me, she added, ‘But too damned dramatic.’
‘We can only be what we are, only do what we have to do, only end as it is foreordained.’
‘Crap. And if you get away before midnight come back.’
She kissed me again and then I tore myself away and stumbled out into the night.
*
I got the taxi to drop me on the corner by Moss Bros, and then walked through into Covent Garden. Having a taxi right up to the door would have been lese-majeste and bad security. Anyway, one had to approach as a penitent on foot; barefoot, if the weather were right. The door to Robert Cledwyn Sutcliffe’s flat looked like the entrance to some seedy publisher’s offices.
I rang the bell and after an interval Hackett, his man-servant, opened it. Before he did so I knew that he would have checked me over the monitoring system from inside.
‘Hullo there, Mr Carver,’ he said cheerfully. In itself a bad sign.
‘Hullo there, Hackett, old cock,’ I said, following him in.
He turned from shutting the door, and said, ‘You’ve bin drinking.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes, I bin drinking, Hackett. What you bin doing? Getting the torture chamber ready?’
Hackett shook his head. ‘We’re in that kind of mood, are we, Mr Carver? I don’t think he’ll like it. He’s been off his food for three weeks.’
‘Good. Let’s hope he keeps it up and starves to death.’
‘Oh dear, Mr Carver, I would advise you to take a brace.’
‘Give me a stiff one, neat, before I go up then. Who’s with him?’
‘Mr Manston and Mr Perkins.’
‘The unholy trinity.’
He winked and nodded me up the stairs on my own. I took a three seconds’ brace outside the door, knocked and walked in.
The only light in the room came from the brackets over his half a dozen paintings. They were always modern and were always different each time I came. Facing me on the far wall was a red-and-blue Francis Bacon job of a nude man who looked the way I felt, all twisted up. To one side of it stood Manston; tall, well-built, in evening dress, a red carnation in his buttonhole, his face tanned and giving me a mild smile. He looked disgustingly healthy. Perkins, in a stiff Donegal tweed suit, had his great bulk collapsed into a leather armchair. He had a fat cigar in his mouth, jutted his chin at me like the prow of a cruiser in welcome, and reached an arm about five feet long out to a side-table to retrieve his glass.
Sutcliffe was sitting in another armchair, a plump, dumpy man, face big and bland like a Buddha’s. A blue smoking jacket was rumpled up over his shoulders and his small legs were thrust out for his tiny feet to rest on a footstool. He looked at me with calm, cool, grey eyes that had behind them over fifty years’ experience of not being fooled or ever indulging in the stupidity of being warmhearted. He went on looking. Nobody said a word. I shuffled my feet and looked at the sideboard. There was a lot of bracing material there. In the past they’d indulged me with the odd glass of Glenlivet—when they had wanted me to feel at home. There were no signs of real welcome now.
I said, ‘It’s pretty cold in here for the time of the year.’ I pulled Saraband Two’s letter from my pocket.
‘We’re in no mood for any of your low-level social chat,’ said Sutcliffe. He said it quietly, but each word had a vibrant core of ferocity.
‘Well, here’s something on a very high level for you to get your teeth into.’
I handed him the letter. He looked at the letter, and then at me, pursed his plump lips in a prissy little movement and then said, ‘God help you, Carver, if you’re up to any of your old tricks.’
‘I’m as pure as driven snow. And driven is the word. Read this after you’ve read that.’ I handed over Wilkins’s letter. I glanced at Manston. ‘You’re reasonably fond of me. Don’t I get a drink?’
Perkins said, ‘Just be content with breathing.’
Sutcliffe sunk his head into his shoulders and
