The Stars’ Tennis Balls

‘We’ve a fair drive ahead of us, I’m afraid. I’d try and get a bit of shut-eye if I were you. I know I shall.’ Delft settled against the headrest.

‘She’ll be worried…’

But Delft, apparently asleep in an instant, said nothing. Since the sleepless night of his watch on the Orphana and the anxious day that followed it, Ned had lain awake on a bumpy train from Glasgow to London. The next day, today – could that really be today? – he had travelled out to the airport and then back again to Catherine Street. There he did, it was true, spend time in bed, but he had not slept. Portia had dozed a little, but Ned had been too happy to think of sleep.

But now, in spite of the strangeness of his circumstances, he found himself starting to yawn. The last thing he saw before he fell asleep was the rear-view mirror and Mr Gaine’ s cold eyes watching him.

‘You’ll have to forgive my brutal way with an egg,’ said Oliver Delft. ‘It started life as an omelette aux fines herbes but now I’m afraid it’s just scrambled eggs speckled with green. Non-stick! It’s just a phrase if you ask me.’ He pushed a plate towards Ned and smiled.

‘Thanks.’ Ned began to shovel the eggs into his mouth, amazed at how hungry he was. ‘Very good.’

‘You honour me. While you eat, we can talk.’

‘Is this your house?’

‘It’s a place I come to sometimes,’ said Delft. He was leaning against the Aga rail, a glass of wine in his hand.

‘Are you a policeman?’

‘A policeman? No, no. Nothing as thrilling as that, I’m afraid. Just a humble toiler in the lower realms of government. All very dull. Here to get to the bottom of one or two things.’

‘If it’s about the drugs the police found, I swear to you I don’t know anything about them.’

Delft smiled again. The smile was an effort. Inside, he was very bored and extremely annoyed to be there. The pleasurable long weekend he had been looking forward to for ages had already been ruined.

Five minutes … five blasted minutes were all that had come between Oliver and freedom. He had already locked his desk and had been in the very act of signing the duty log when Maureen had bustled in, twittering about a flash from West End Central.

‘Isn’t Stapleton here yet? I’m about to go off watch.’

‘No, Mr Delft. Captain Stapleton hasn’t signed in. There’s no one else.’

‘Bugger,’ Oliver had said, meaning it. ‘All right then, let’s have a look.’

He had taken Maureen’s typed slip and read it through carefully. ‘Hum. Who’s in the Heavy Pool?’

‘Mr Gaine, sir.’

‘Get him to warm the car up. I’ll be out in three.’

That had been something at least. Mr Gaine was Oliver’s man and could be trusted not to make life more difficult by ruffling feathers and stamping on sensibilities.

Whatever Oliver had expected when he arrived at Savile Row police station, it certainly hadn’t been a worried schoolboy. The whole thing seemed ripely absurd. Undoubtedly a mistake, he had said to himself the moment he laid eyes on the floppy haired teenager jiggling his knee up and down under the interview-room table, a forlorn and bewildered look on his face. Delft may have been only twenty-six himself, but he had seen enough to be sure that Ned Maddstone was as innocent as a day-old chick. A day old carrier pigeon chick, he thought to himself. He was pleased with the image and made a note to include it in his report. His masters were old-fashioned enough to enjoy a pert turn of phrase.

He looked across at the child now.

Ned was sitting at the kitchen table, still jogging his leg on the ball of his foot, with an earnest pleading look on his innocent face.

‘Honestly,’ he was saying. ‘I absolutely swear. On the Holy Bible!’

‘Calm down,’ said Oliver. ‘I really don’t think a Bible will be necessary. Not that we’d be able to find one in a place of sin like this,’ he added, looking round the room as if it were less a country kitchen and more a Louisiana brothel. ‘You can swear on Marguerite Patten’s Cookery in Colour if it gives you pleasure, but there’s no need.’

‘You do believe me then?’

‘Well, of course I believe you, you daft young onion. All some silly mistake. Still, as we’re here, you might as well tell me what the words “Interior, interior, interior” mean.’

‘I don’t know!’ said Ned. ‘The policeman asked me the same thing, but I’ve never heard them. I mean, I’ve heard the word “interior” before, obviously, but…’

‘You see, this is what we have to try and understand,’ said Oliver. ‘And when we’ve got to the bottom of it we can let you go and you can get on with your life and I can get on with mine, which I’m sure we’d both like.’

Ned nodded vigorously. ‘Absolutely! But…’

‘All right then. Now let’s have a look at this shall we?’

Oliver came forward and laid on the table a single sheet of paper.

Ned stared at it mystified. It was a typed list of names and addresses. He recognised at once the names of the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Defence followed by others, vaguely familiar to Ned. Last of all came his father’s name, Sir Charles Maddstone. At the bottom, in handwritten large black block capitals were the words –

INTERIOR INTERIOR INTERIOR

‘What does it mean?’ he asked.

‘It belongs to you,’ said Oliver. ‘You tell me.’

‘My piece of paper? But I’ve never seen it before.’

‘Then what was it doing in the inside pocket of your jacket?’

‘In the… oh!’ The truth began to dawn. ‘Was it… was it originally in an envelope?’

‘It was in an envelope!’ said Oliver. ‘You’re absolutely right! It was in this envelope!’ He held up a white envelope, an envelope that to his annoyance the police had torn open without a single thought. Oliver had immediately spotted a tiny hair behind the flap, a little security measure sealed there to warn the recipient of any tampering. It might be possible to find a duplicate envelope and put the letter back in play, but one never knew what other safeguards the police might have blundered through. Not really their fault of course, he conceded. The search had been routine. They had imagined they were dealing with nothing more than a spoilt kid’s drug stash.

‘But why is it important?’ Ned asked. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Well now, you’ve just admitted that it’s yours, so I should’ve thought you’d be the one to tell me.

Ned shifted uncomfortably. ‘But you see I was… I was given it.’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more than that.’

‘By a man.

‘Well that eliminates two billion or so, but it’s still not quite enough, is it? We’re going to have to narrow it down a little more than that.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘A dead man gave it to you.

‘He only died yesterday.’

‘Don’t arse around with me, Ned, there’s a good fellow. Who was he and how did he come to give it to you?’

Tell me the thing in your life that you hold most holy.

Ned could have wept with frustration. He was desperate to do the right thing. He wanted to please this nice man, but he wanted to keep his word too. Would it bring him the most terrible luck to break so mighty an oath?

What is the thing that matters to you most in all the world?

What would Portia want him to do?

‘Is it very important that I tell you? Important enough to make me break a solemn oath?’

‘Well now, young scout,’ said Oliver. ‘I’ll tell you a thing. A thing you shouldn’t know, but that I trust you to keep to yourself. Glass of wine?’

‘Do you have any milk?’

.‘Milk? Let me see.’ Oliver went over to the fridge and peered suspiciously inside as if it were the first fridge he had ever inspected. ‘Milk, milk, milk… ah yes. Now my job, Ned, such as it is,’ he went on, ‘involves, amongst other things, doing my best to stop people letting off bombs in this country. Only UHT I’m afraid – semi- skimmed. Do you mind?’

‘That’s perfect, thank you.’

‘Can’t bear the stuff myself. Makes me snotty. Letting off bombs, Ned, is a thing some scallywags do, as you must have read in the papers. They’ll do it in pubs, clubs, offices, railway stations and shops, killing and crippling ordinary people who have no quarrel with anyone but their bank managers, bosses and spouses. Drink it from the carton, there’s a lamb. Now, some of these bombers, they like to call up a police station or a newspaper office to claim the credit, if credit is the right word, or – if they’ve a spark of humanity and it’s only property they want to destroy – to warn the police to evacuate the area. Making sense so far?’

Ned nodded, wiping a white moustache from his lips with the back of his hand.

‘Well then. To prevent any old deranged freak from calling up and leaving hoax warnings or taking credit just for fun, a more or less workable arrangement has been arrived at between us – the government, and them – the bona fide terrorists. When a bomber calls up a newspaper or a police station he gives a code word, to show that he is the real thing. Not going too fast for you?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Well now, it so happens that the Provisional IRA’s latest coded warning for a bomb, just a few days old, is the word “Interior” repeated three times.’