“ ‘Morning, Pop!”
“I’ll pop you,” Roger said, gruffly. He struggled up to a sitting position as Richard, his younger son, half a head taller than Martin, entered the bedroom. Both boys had the glow of health in cheeks and eyes, and in that moment something in their expressions made them remarkably alike, although usually they were so different. Your mother’s all right or you wouldn’t be looking so pleased with yourselves. You want something, or you wouldn’t both be here. No.”
He began to pour out tea.
At twenty-one, Martin was more than old enough to know his own mind, and he was studying art at the Chelsea College of Painting, working in the evenings and weekends. Richard was working at a film studio near London, hoping to write scripts for a living. It was seldom that either came to him for anything, these days; for them both to come at once was rare indeed.
“If it’s no,” Richard said, “you’re in for a shock, Dad.”
Roger sipped his tea.
“Well, one of us is,” he temporized. There was something in their minds he couldn’t guess. It wasn’t April Fool’s Day. It wasn’t his birthday. It wasn’t —
Suddenly, he remembered; it was the first day of the Summer Sales, and Janet had said she wanted to go to Oxford Street. She was desperate for a new Autumn outfit; he must have slept on — but no, it wasn’t too late — just before eight.
“All right,” he said. “Shock me.”
“Mum forgot to get any money out of the bank,” Richard said, “and you’ve only a pound in your wallet. So she’s gone to get a place in the queue at Debb’s, and somehow you have to take her some money.”
“Twenty-four years wed, she complained,” said Scoop, “and she still doesn’t know where you keep your secret hoard. She turned the place upside down.”
“I still keep it at the bank, and she knows it,” Roger said. “I’ll have to change a cheque at a shop on the way.”
It was an empty kind of morning, without Janet; emptier as soon as the boys had left. Boys? And Richard a bare year younger than Martin? He laughed the thought away as he went downstairs to get his own breakfast; but there was instant porridge, bacon and eggs in the frying pan, everything ready for him.
He caught Janet a few yards from the main entrance at Debb’s, one of several hundred women; and once he had put thirty pounds into her hands there was a surge forward as the door opened.
“See you!” Roger called.
“Thank you, darling,” she said breathlessly, and was carried with the crowd, dark-haired, neat in a plain grey suit, young for her forty-odd years, and at that moment, not thinking of him at all.
Roger got back into the car, restarted the engine, and was soon caught up in the stream of early morning traffic. There had been a time when he had arrived at Scotland Yard morning after morning with a sense of excitement and expectation, but now he knew what to expect. Crime had a thousand variations, and he seemed to know them all. For a Detective Superintendent, murder cases had lost their stimulating effect. The paperwork and routine of a senior Criminal Investigation Department officer kept him at the desk more and more, and there were times when the pleasant office was like a jail; or like a cell at the squat grey building of Cannon Row Police Station, which looked as if it were in a corner of the Yard premises, but in fact was not. All the small windows were barred. Big Ben could look down on its slate roof from the tower of the Houses of Parliament, but couldn’t make the drab grey look bright even on this fine warm summer morning.
Roger parked his car and walked up the steps. Good morning, good morning, “morning, “lo, Handsome; such greetings had become a ritual. Calling him “Handsome” West had, too. So had sitting at his desk and looking through mail and reports. But today it depressed him. Glancing through the dossier of an old lag, due at Great Marlborough Street Court on a charge for the thirteenth time, Roger knew exactly what he would say, what the magistrate would say and what he would look like, peering over his spectacles; what lies the accused would utter, forlornly, what the magistrate’s clerk would intone, and what everything and everybody would be like. He lit a cigarette, yawned, scribbled a few pencilled notes, and the telephone bell rang.
“West speaking.”
“Good morning, sir.” It was a girl. “The American Embassy — I’m sorry, the United States Embassy — is on the line. They wanted the Assistant Commissioner or the Commander, but they’re not in, sir.”
“I’ll speak to the Embassy,” Roger said. At least this was different.
“Just a moment, please,” the girl said.
Almost at once a man with a clipped North American accent said: “Is that Superintendent West?”
“Yes, sir. Good morning.”
“Good morning. Mr West, we need your help here, and we need it very badly and very fast. I am Tony Marino, and I’ll wait in my office until you arrive. You’ll find an impatient and worried man, Mr West.”
Roger could have asked questions, and could have been formal. Instead, he said simply:
“I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes, Mr Marino.”
“I’m very grateful.” The American’s voice died in the click of the telephone.
Roger stood up, took his trilby from a wall-peg and hurried to the door. If he saw the Commander, CID or Hardy, the new Assistant Commissioner, he would have to report this, and he didn’t want to miss it He saw no one of superior rank, but as he reached the ground floor in the lift, Chief Inspector Bill Sloan, big, fresh-faced, boyish- looking, was waiting to step in.
“Just the man,” said Roger. “I’ve had a call from the American Embassy, they want someone in a hurry. It fell in my lap, and I’m keeping it Tell the Commander or the AC.”
Sloan grinned. “I’ll forget it long enough for you to get there.”
