'Oh. Oh, Pritchard drives me.'
He bent to kiss her cheek, but she turned her face to him and kissed his lips. When he pulled away, her face was flushed. She held his arm and said: 'I want you, Derek.'
He stared at her.
'I want us to spend a long, contented retirement together,' she went on, speaking hurriedly. 'I want you to relax, and eat the right food, and grow healthy and slim again. I want the man who came courting in an open-top Riley, and the man who came back from the war with medals and married me, and the man who held my hand when I bore my children. I want to love you.'
He stood nonplussed. She had never been like this with him, never. He felt hopelessly incapable of dealing with it. He did not know what to say, what to do, where to look. He said: 'I… must catch the train.'
She regained her composure quickly. 'Yes. You must hurry.'
He looked at her a moment longer, but she would not meet his eyes. He said: 'Um… good-bye.'
She nodded dumbly.
He went out. He put on his hat in the hall, then let Pritchard open the front door for him. The dark blue Mercedes stood on the gravel drive, gleaming in the sunshine. Pritchard must wash it every morning before I get up, Hamilton thought.
The conversation with Ellen had been most peculiar, he decided, as they drove to the railway station. Through the window he watched the play of sunlight on the already-browning leaves, and ran over the key scenes in his mind. I want to love you, she had said, with the emphasis on you. Talking of the things he had sacrificed for the business, she had said and God knows what else.
I want to love you, not someone else. Was that what she meant? Had he lost the fidelity of his wife, as well as his health? Perhaps she simply wanted him to think she might be having an affair. That was more like Ellen. She dealt in subtleties. Cries for help were not her style.
After the six-month results, he needed domestic problems like a creditors' meeting.
There was something else. She had blushed when Pritchard asked if she would be using the car; then, hastily, she had said Pritchard drives me.
Hamilton said: 'Where do you take Mrs. Hamilton, Pritchard?'
'She drives herself, sir. I make myself useful around the house-there's always plenty-'
'Yes, all right,' Hamilton interrupted. 'This isn't a time-and-motion study. I was only curious.'
'Sir.'
His ulcer stabbed him. Tea, he thought: I should drink milk in the morning.
6
Herbert Chieseman switched on the light, silenced the alarm clock, turned up the volume of the radio, which had been playing all night, and pressed the rewind button of the reel-to-reel tape recorder. Then he got out of bed.
He put the kettle on, and stared out of the studio apartment window while he waited for the seven-hour tape to return to the start. The morning was clear and bright. The sun would be strong later, but now it was chilly. He put on trousers and a sweater over the underwear he had worn in bed, and stepped into carpet slippers.
His home was a single large room in a North London Victorian house which was past its best. The furniture, the Ascot heater, and the old gas cooker belonged to the landlord. The radio was Herbert's. His rent included the use of a communal bathroom and-most important-exclusive use of the attic.
The radio dominated the room. It was a powerful VHF receiver, made from parts he had carefully selected in half a dozen shops along Tottenham Court Road. The aerial was in the roof loft. The tape deck was also homemade.
He poured tea into a cup, added condensed milk from a tin, and sat at his worktable. Apart from the electronic equipment, the table bore only a telephone, a ruled exercise book, and a ballpoint pen. He opened the book at a clean page and wrote the date at the top in a large, cursive script. Then he reduced the volume of the radio and began to play the night's tape at high speed. Each time a high-pitched squeal indicated that there was speech on the recording, he slowed the reel with his finger until he could distinguish the words.
'… car proceed to Holloway Road, the bottom end, to assist PC…'
'… Ludlow Road, West Five, a Mrs. Shaftesbury-sounds like a domestic, Twenty-One…'
'… Inspector says if that Chinese is still open he'll have chicken fried rice with chips…'
'… Holloway Road get a move on-that PC's in trouble…'
Herbert stopped the tape and made a note.
'… reported burglary of a house-that's near Wimbledon Common, Jack…'
'… Eighteen, do you read…'
'… any cars Lee area free to assist Fire Brigade at twenty-two Feather Street…'
Herbert made another note.
'… Eighteen, do you read…'
'… I don't know, give her an aspirin…'
'… assault with a knife, not serious…'
'… where the hell have you been, Eighteen…'
Herbert's attention strayed to the photograph on the mantelpiece above the boarded-in fireplace. The picture was flattering: Herbert had known this, twenty years ago, when she had given it to him; but now he had forgotten. Oddly, he did not think of her as she really had been, anymore. When he remembered her he visualized a woman with flawless skin and hand-tinted cheeks, posing before a faded panorama in a photographer's studio.
'… theft of one color television and damage to a plate-glass window…'
He had been the first among his circle of friends to 'lose the wife,' as they would put it. Two or three of them had suffered the tragedy since: one had become a cheerful drunkard, another had married a widow. Herbert had buried his head in his hobby, radio. He began listening to police broadcasts during the day when he did not feel well enough to go to work, which was quite often.
'… Grey Avenue, Golders Green, reported assault…'
One day, after hearing the police talk about a bank raid, he had telephoned the Evening Post. A reporter had thanked him for the information and taken his name and address. The raid had been a big one-a quarter of a million pounds-and the story was on the front page of the Post that evening. Herbert had been proud to have given them the tip-off, and told the story in three pubs that night. Then he forgot about it. Three months later he got a check for fifty pounds from the newspaper. With the check was a statement which read: 'Two shot in?250,000 raid' and gave the date of the robbery.
'… leave it out, Charlie, if she won't make a complaint, forget it…'
The following day Herbert had stayed at home and phoned the Post every time he picked something up on the police wavelength. That afternoon he got a call from a man who said he was deputy news editor, who explained just what the paper wanted from people like Herbert. He was told not to report an assault unless a gun was used or someone was killed; not to bother with burglaries unless the address was in Belgravia, Chelsea, or Kensington; not to report robberies except when weapons were used or very large amounts of cash stolen.
'… proceed to twenty-three, Narrow Road, and wait…'
He got the idea quickly, because he was not stupid, and the Post's news values were far from subtle. Soon he realized he was earning slightly more on his 'sick' days than when he went to work. What was more, he preferred listening to the radio to making boxes for cameras. So he gave in his notice, and became what the newspaper called an earwig.
'… better give me that description now…'
After he had been working full-time on the radio for a few weeks the deputy news editor came to his house-it was before he moved to the studio apartment-to talk to him. The newspaperman said Herbert's work was very useful to the paper, and how would he like to work for them exclusively? That would mean Herbert would phone tips only to the Post, and not to other papers. But he would get a weekly retainer to make up for the loss of income. Herbert did not say that he never had phoned any other papers. He accepted the offer graciously.
