Spy Story

'Have you gone mad?' said Marjorie.

I put a finger in the crack and widened it enough to pull a large piece of broken glass away from the putty. 'O.K., Ophelia,' I said. 'You're the only one I love; stop complaining.'

I put my hand through the broken glass panel and found the key, still in the old-fashioned mortice lock. It turned with a screech of its rusty tumblers. Glancing round to be sure there was no one coming down the alley, I opened the door and went in.

'This is burglary,' said Marjorie, but she followed me.

'House-breaking, you mean. Burglary only at night, remember what I told you far that crossword?'

The sun came through the holland blind; thick yellow light, viscous, almost, like a roomful of pale treacle. I released the blind and it sprang up with a deafening clatter. If no one heard that, I thought, the place is empty.

'But you could go to prison,' said Marjorie.

'We'd be together,' I said, 'and that's what matters.' I leaned forward to kiss her but she pushed me away. We were in the pantry. Lined up along the servery there were wooden bowls, each with a limp piece of lettuce and a segment of pale-pink tomato. There were desserts, too: platoons of caramels and battalions of babas, deployed under muslin and awaiting the word to attack.

I helped myself from a tray of sausages. They were still warm. 'Have a sausage, Marjorie.' She shook her head. I bit into one. 'Entirely bread,' I said. 'Be all right toasted, with butter and marmalade.' I walked into the next room; Marjorie followed.

'A really long lease is what we should go for,' said Marjorie. 'And with both of us working…'

The sewing machine was still there but the uniform had gone and so had the dossier of measurements and photos. I went down the worn stone steps to the room into which the refrigeration chamber had been built. It switched itself on and made us both jump. 'Especially with me being a doctor,' said Marjorie. 'The bank manager told me that.'

There was a tall cupboard built into one wall. Its door was fastened with a massive padlock. A hairpin had no effect on it.

I opened the kitchen drawers, one by one, until I found the sharpening steel. I put that through the padlock and put my weight behind it, but, as always, it was the hasp that gave way: its screws slid out of the dead woodwork and fell on the floor.

'It's against the law,' said Marjorie. 'I don't care what you say.'

'A shop, or a restaurant? Implied right of access — a tricky point of law. It's probably not even trespass,' I opened the cupboard.

'It's better than paying rent,' said Marjorie. 'You've paid for your old place three times over, I've alway's said that.'

'I know you have, Marjorie.' There was nothing inside the cupboard except dead flies and a packet: of account-overdue stickers.

'We might get it all from the bank — not even have to go to a building society,' said Marjorie.

The door of the cold room had two large swing clips holding it. Outside, on the wall, there were light switches and a fuse box marked 'Danger'. I put the light switch on and a small red neon indicator came alight. I put my weight upon the swing clips and without effort opened up the giant door.

'That would be wonderful,' I said.

'You're not listening,' said Marjorie.

'Building society,' I said, 'wonderful idea.'

'Not have to go to one,' said Marjorie.

'Well, there you are,' I said, 'you've answered your own question.'

Score nothing for guessing that this was an ordinary room disguised as a cold chamber. The frozen air came out to meet me. I stepped inside. It was a normal refrigerated room, about eight feet square, with slatted shelving from floor to ceiling on all sides, except for the part of the rear wall that was occupied by the refrigeration machinery. The displacement of the air nipped the thermostat. The motor clicked on and built up the revolutions until it was wobbling gently on the sprung mounts. It was cold and I buttoned my jacket and turned up the collar. Marjorie came inside, 'Like the mortuary,' she pronounced. Her voice echoed in the tiny space. I did my monster walk towards her, my hands raised like claws.

'Stop it,' she said. She shivered.

Five sides of mutton were lined up along one side. Frozen fillets — fifty according to the label on the box — had been piled up on the top shelf, and crammed alongside them were three large bags of ready peeled frozen saute potatoes and three cardboard boxes of mixed vegetables.

'One gross individual portions: Coq au vin, supremes de volatile, supremes de chasseur. Mixed.' A large tin of 'Curry anything' and a shelf crammed with frozen lamb chops. Just inside the door there were three bottles of champagne being cooled the hard way. No hollow walls, no secret compartments, no trapdoors.

We came out of the refrigerated room and I closed the door again. I went back into the kitchen and sniffed at the. saucepans in the bain marie. They were all empty, I cut a slice of bread. 'Bread?'

She shook her head. 'Where could they all be?' said Marjorie. 'It's not early closing.'

'There you've got me,' I admitted, 'but I'll look down in the wine cellar. They could just be hiding.'

'It's nearly half past.'

'You'd better have a sausage. By the time we've finished this burglary, there won't be time for lunch.' I took another one myself and squashed it between a folded slice of bread.

She grabbed my arm. 'Have you done this sort of thing before?' she asked.

'Not with a partner. Sausage sandwich?'

I thought she was going to cry again. 'Oh, Patrick!' She didn't stamp her foot exactly, but she would have done in her other shoes.

'I was only joking,' I said. 'You didn't think I was serious?'

'I don't even think you are serious about the house,' she said.

There was no one in the cellar. No one in the toilet. No one in the store room upstairs.

An hour or so ago this had been a flourishing restaurant, now it was not just deserted: it: was abandoned.

There was something in the atmosphere, perhaps the sound that our voices and footsteps made with, all the windows and doors closed, or perhaps there really is something that happens to houses that are forsaken.

It had been hastily done and yet it was systematic and disciplined. No attempt had been made to save the valuables. There was an expensive Sony cassette player, a cellar full of wine and spirits, and two or three boxes of cigars and cigarettes in a cupboard over the serving hatch. And yet not one scrap of paper remained: no bills, receipts or invoices, not even a menu. Even the grocery order that I'd seen wedged down behind the knife rack had been carefully retrieved and taken away.

'There's sliced ham: you like that.'

'Do stop it,' she said.

I walked into the restaurant. The light came through the net curtains and reflected upon the marble table- tops and the bent-wood chairs arranged around them. It was all as shadowy and still as a Victorian photograph. Antique mirrors, gold-lettered with advertisements for cigarettes and aperitifs, were fixed to every wall. Mirrored there were seemingly endless other dining-rooms, where red-eyed pretty girls stretched ringless hands towards tall shabby furtive men.

Reflected there, too, was a bright-red milk float, and I heard it whine to a halt outside in the street. I pulled back the bolts on the front door and let Marjorie pass me. The milkman was putting two crates of milk on the doorstep. He was; a young man with a battered United Dairy cap, and a brown warehouse coat. He smiled and spent a moment or two recovering Ms breath. 'You've only just missed them,' he said.

'How long ago?'

'Best part of half an hour, bit more perhaps.'

'It was the traffic,' I said.

'Poor fellow,' said the milkman. 'How did it happen?'