'But-you?'
'There's someone,' he began, 'someone high up, in this country's intelligence service, and it isn't Kenneth Aubrey—' He raised his hand to still protest, but there was little reaction to the name on Margaret's face. Her white hands had stopped their fitful quarrel. 'Someone who is a Russian agent — someone who's afraid of Hyde and me being on Aubrey's side…' He sighed. 'I'll tell you everything I know,' he said.
She listened without interruption. Aubrey, Vienna, Helsinki, Oxfordshire. Once or twice, when the subject of her father appeared like a broken bone through skin, her features winced or pursed. Otherwise she was expressionless, her eyes fixed on Massinger, her fears for him more evident than any other concern. Occasionally, her hands resumed their conflict in her lap, on the light blue and grey of her skirt.
He announced, after a final pause: 'Obviously, they'll kill me unless I can find out who they are. Who he is.' Then he sipped at the remainder of his whisky. His throat was dry with speech, and with renewed fear. He had explained it all to her in unemotional terms, with simple clarity. Now, having so carefully and clearly laid out the parts of the puzzle, he saw that it possessed more potency, more ability to frighten than a crowd of vague, unformed premonitions or nightmares.
It was strange, he thought, that when he told her he had begun to believe Aubrey guilty of Castleford's murder, she had shown little in the way of expression. He had paused to allow her to comment, but she had done no more than wave him on with his narrative. Now, as he waited for her to speak, she studied him for a long time in silence. Her cheeks seemed blanched beneath the make-up, and there was a small, close-knitted frown above her nose. Then she stood up, crossed to the sideboard, and poured herself a drink. She returned to his chair and stood by it — as she had done a week ago when Alistair Burnet had stunned them with the news of Aubrey's arrest and the accusations against him, and her father's face had filled the television screen.
She clutched his hand. He did not look up. He felt the tremor running through her grip, and squeezed her fingers. She shook his hand gently. He heard the tumbler touch against her teeth as she drank from it.
'What do we do, then?' she asked.
He sighed. She shook his hand gently once more. He was indeed home. But he had returned to find that his home had been transformed into a fortress in his absence. He was no longer alone, but he had brought, close behind him, the enemies he had made so that now they threatened his wife as well as himself.
Using the number of one of Aubrey's credit cards and the telephone of a nearby restaurant, Mrs Grey had bought a change of clothes, underwear, toilet accessories, and a suitcase to contain the purchases. A friend of hers had picked up the clothes and toiletries and the suitcase and left them in a locker at Victoria Station, bringing Mrs Grey the key.
Now, all he had to do was to place himself in conjunction with his new and unseen luggage. A ticket to Dover was all that was missing from his arrangements — no more than a moment at a booking office window. He had only to slip from the house, find a taxi, get into it, order it to Victoria, collect the suitcase…
The arrangements revolved again and again in his mind like something worrying him while he was still on the edge of sleep. He could not awaken sufficiently to rid himself of it or solve the puzzle it presented.
Because such repetition was only a blind, a piece of self-delusion. Beneath it lay the extreme difficulty, the practical impossibility, of leaving his flat unnoticed. Beneath that again in the geology of his fears lay the enormous and still enlarging sense of his imminent black ruin; the despair at the possible discovery of his journal before he could destroy it. Forty-five years of service, almost seventy years of his life, would be reduced to complete and utter ruin. It had been good for that man if he had not been bom, his memory had quoted at him throughout the day. He could not regard such an idea as melodrama, or exaggerated or out of proportion. He realised that his professional ruin would mean that much to him. He would, with foreknowledge of it, have chosen not to begin, not to have existed.
He had to go—
He knew he could not rest if he trusted in a message to Clara. He trusted her, but he did not trust himself to find peace of mind without himself putting the journal on the fire or tearing it into small pieces and flushing it away; destroying it. He had written the full and true account of the death of Robert Castleford because his accursed, punctilious conscience and overweening self-righteousness would not allow him to leave the truth unrecorded. It had been as if, one day far ahead, he expected to be asked to account for Castleford's murder — as now he had been.
But now, now he did not want the truth, had no use for it. The truth would be regarded as a lie, his motives overlooked or dismissed. Now, only the brute fact would have significance. Eldon would say, with triumph in his tone, 'You did do it, then? We knew you had. As for the rest of it — mere nonsense.
He had to see those pages burning or flushing away! There was no other way, no help for it. He had to make the journey, escape from England.
Even that idea pained him; an indigestive, burning pain in his chest. He, having to escape from his own country, the country he had loyally served for most of his adult life, in war and peace, declared war and undeclared war.
He looked at the clock. Almost six. Heavy traffic outside, the flash of passing headlights on the ceiling of the darkened room.
Through the window, if he raised himself in his armchair to see it, Regent's Park had retreated into darkness. Beyond the park, the lights of Primrose Hill receded northwards into the distance beneath the orange-glowing winter sky. The first stars were out, hard and brittle. The room was warm yet he sat in the chair in his dark overcoat, hat resting on his lap, as if he could no longer afford his heating bills.
He was ready to leave. He needed only to find the nerve to begin, to take the first step. He had prepared for the moment, perhaps ever since they had confined him to the flat.
Compulsively, without definite purpose but with all his professional instincts, he had studied the surveillance teams; their characters, their routines, their weaknesses… most of all, their growing, inevitable complacency.
He had encouraged Mrs Grey, much against her will and much to her disgust, to begin to supply the various teams with cups of tea, cups of coffee. Then to warm the pies or fish and chips they had bought. To provide sandwiches on occasion. To mother them…
Stiffly, angrily, she had learned her part and softened into it. He, meanwhile, had watched their change- overs, especially those that came after dark. Especially this one at six. Every evening he had watched.
Sloppy. Complacent, lazy, sloppy — more so with each passing day and night. Only one old man to worry about upstairs… easy, cushy…
Tonight, it was curry from an Indian take-away. Mrs Grey had chilled the lager they drank with it, in her fridge. She had just taken it out to them, enough cans for the two teams, new and old. She would chat, in a motherly way, for a few moments, acting like a further sedative. Then, when she judged it safest, sensed the right moment, she would return to the front door and ring the bell, summoning him to begin his journey. There would be only a moment when he might slip undetected across the street to the darker park side of the terrace. Then he might reach the corner, then the Marylebone Road and the rush-hour and the taxis… They would not be expecting —
The doorbell sounded, shrill in the silent flat. Aubrey's body twitched as if electrocuted. His hands grabbed the arms of the chair. His hat fell to the carpet. Like an automaton, he pushed himself upright, bent to collect his hat, then moved stiffly to the door. He did not glance at the furniture, the emperor's new clothes that had been no more than an illusion, but left the flat almost unseeingly. He descended to the ground floor. The front door was slightly ajar. He could see Mrs Grey in the porch, hidden from the surveillance cars by deep shadow. She turned as his hand touched the latch. Aubrey could tell, by the startled look on her face and the immediate, worried frown, that his face must portray wildness and inadequacy. He patted her hand fumblingly like a very old and senile man. She appeared unreassured. He brushed past her. She had no idea where he was going, only abroad, escaping — what she did not know she could not mistakenly tell.
He let go of her hand, and his own hand fell to his side as if she had been taking the weight of it. His hand, then arm, then trunk, then legs, too, became heavy and slow and burdensome. He did not look either right or left, but crossed the road with a firm, blind, jerky step. He reached the opposite pavement. When he turned, the facades of the Nash houses gleamed orange-white in the light of the street-lamps. Aubrey began to walk away from the parked cars of the two surveillance teams. Mrs Grey had not even had time to tell him all four men were sitting in
