He meant it. A cold spasm wriggled through my guts.
‘Cut it out,’ I said angrily.
‘It’s the truth. Yours won’t be the first body I’ve carried out of ’ere. Proper routine we got. No trouble. Just a quick injection and you’re out like a light. No trouble about disposal, neither. Ambulance waiting at the back, nice little drive down to just below Greenwich and you get dumped in the tide. Nice pub in Greenwich, The Ship, ’spects you know it. We always stop there on the way back for a couple of quick ones. Let’s see, be three weeks since I was there last.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Frightening you, am I?’
‘Of course you are, you bastard.’
He chuckled and went, and I sat and munched the dry biscuits. Before I had finished they started up the tropical-arctic treatment again and after an hour a colliery brass band came on, blaring away at Colonel Bogey for a start and carrying on with a two-hour repertoire. And after that it all started again, the full story and omit no details. First with Sutcliffe, whose fat lips had started to be a little twitchy, then Perkins, who picked out a few spots on my body not already bruised and made a tidy job of filling in. I slugged him once when he got a bit careless, but my fist bounced off his jaw as though it had been made of india-rubber. Then Manston came, wearing a neatly pressed, Savile-Row, grey-flannel suit and smelling of Tabac after-shave lotion.
He was sad and gentle, but adamant; the full story and omit no details.
Lying on the bunk, chewed up, battered up, heated up, cooled down, eardrums aching from brass-band music, I said, ‘For God’s sake, you’re a reasonable guy, you know me. I’m not part of the Saraband Two set-up. If I had been I’d have admitted it ages ago. I’m no hero. I want to get out of here.’
He said, ‘We’ve had people in here who’ve said just that. Little shrimpy types, hardly any blood in their veins, skinny types, fat types, tough types and angel-faced, wide-eyed innocent types. All sorts, and you could have got lovely odds that they were innocent—but they weren’t. Any more than you are.’
‘Just assume I am.’
‘Makes no difference. The innocent have got to suffer with the guilty in this. Get it into your head—this is a State affair of the highest secrecy. It’s the Prime Minister who is involved personally. Already his bottom is itchy with anxiety because one slip-up, one line of publicity, could blow this thing open. Can’t you see that? He wants his son back. That means a deal with the other side. Let that story break and God knows where the consequences would end. So . . .’
‘So what?’
‘So, it’s obvious—whether you tell us the truth or not, you’re not going out of this room alive. Do you think Sutcliffe would let you wander around with a scoop like this in your hands? In a year’s time you’d be turning it into cash some way.’
‘You really mean that?’
‘Yes. And if I didn’t, I couldn’t help you.’
‘Why not?’
With all the cold calmness in the world, he said, ‘Because we’ve already made preliminary contact with your Saraband Two crowd. They insist—for the common good—that a rider be added to the exchange agreement. We have to eliminate you—and they will eventually do the same for your Wilkins.’
‘The bastards! You’re not taking that, surely?’
‘Why not? We don’t want publicity, now or later. Anyway, it’s now part of the deal for Dawson’s return.’
‘And you’re accepting it?’
‘Of course, and the P.M. wants his son back. Naturally, he won’t be bothered with all the details.’
I was silent for a long time, largely because my throat was too dry to let me say anything and my heart was pumping away so loudly that I doubt whether he could have heard anything I said.
Finally I said in a very small voice, ‘Can’t you do something about Wilkins? She knows how to keep her mouth shut.’
He shrugged. ‘No. It would be the same for Olaf, Gloriana Stankowski and Jane Judd, if you’d told them the real facts. I tell you the lid’s going to be put on this pot for good. You think, for instance, that Saraband Two and that lot will ever let Freeman or Pelegrina go free?’
‘No.’
‘Of course not. They’re giving them that impression right now, even letting them pay back money, send postcards and so on—but they won’t ever get away. Now do you get some idea of the kind of fix you’re in? Once this exchange goes through, both sides have every reason in the world to eliminate all the fringe types who know anything about it. Certain professionals are going to know—but then they’re professionals, trained not to open their mouths. Pity you didn’t join us years ago—we might have treated you differently.’
I stood up. I hated his guts. I hated Sutcliffe, Perkins and the whole cold-blooded lot of them—and I was scared stiff for myself.
‘Don’t try anything,’ he said.
‘I’m not, not for myself. But do one thing for me—try and work it for Wilkins. She’s a professional, all right. You tell her to keep her mouth shut, and shut it will be for the rest of her life. Do that for me, you high-class, ice-cold security bastard. Just one favour.’
He stood up and moved to the door. ‘I’ll put it to Sutcliffe—he’s listening now, anyway—but it will be entirely his decision.’
He went. The brass band came on. The heat and the cold started up, and eventually they came again, by themselves, in twos, in threes, pumping away, the whole story, omit nothing, not even the smallest detail this time—if it had not been for Manston’s talk about Wilkins and what would happen to her, I might have disgorged the few tiny details that I had been keeping back. Not that they would have helped much. But now
