Читать книгу The Villa in Italy: Escape to the Italian sun with this captivating, page-turning mystery - Elizabeth Edmondson - Страница 15

‘Mr Grimond wants to see you right away, Mr Bryant,’ said the secretary in the outer office. ‘The moment you got in, he said.’

‘Have I time for my tea?’ Mr Bryant said, eyeing the cup on his desk, which had a saucer balanced on top, and a custard cream biscuit beside it.

‘At your peril. He’s on the warpath.’

‘Better get it over with, I suppose,’ said the youthful Mr Bryant with a sigh.

Mr Grimond’s office was entirely without colour. Situated on the second floor of a red-brick building in Queen Anne’s Gate, it overlooked St James’s Park, or would have done if its occupant hadn’t chosen to shut out the view with two dingy blinds. A square of grey carpet, of precisely the right size for his civil service rank, was laid on the floor, and on it was placed a dark wooden desk with a scratched leather top, strewn with buff files. Mr Grimond matched the sobriety of his room with his salt and pepper hair, faded tweed suit and brown tie. He sat on a wooden revolving chair that squeaked dismally every time he moved.

‘You wanted to see me?’ Mr Bryant said.

Grimond looked up from his file. ‘Got in at last, have you? Yes. A man’s gone missing. One George Helsinger. Dr Helsinger. Alice has asked for his file. Read it, and then catch the next train to Cambridge.’

‘Cambridge?’

‘Cambridge. Cold market town on the edge of the fens.’

‘I know Cambridge. I was at university there. But why do I have to go to Cambridge?’

‘Because the man who’s gone missing is one of their boffins.’

‘Oh, dear. Is he important?’

‘Would I be going to this much trouble if he weren’t? He’s one of our top men. An atom scientist. Worked on the A bomb at Los Alamos, nothing he doesn’t know. And I bet my last ten-bob note he’s halfway to Moscow by now.’

‘In which case, why am I going to Cambridge?’

‘To make enquiries. Talk to his colleagues, his landlady, find out what he’s been working on, has he been moody, what are his political views, as if I didn’t know. He’ll be a Red, like all the rest of them.’

‘When was he reported missing?’

‘Yesterday, after I noticed that he was down as having been granted a sabbatical. Six months’ leave of absence from the laboratory, I ask you, nobody gives us six months off on full pay. I checked to find out where he was spending his time, and it turned out nobody knew. No attachments to any foreign universities—that’s what they often do, apparently, take themselves on a jaunt to America or France or somewhere they can be idle at the taxpayer’s expense. “Time off to think” is all the idiots he works with could come up with.’

‘Do we know if he has actually gone abroad?’

‘Told his landlady he was going to the Continent, and didn’t know when he’d be back. He’s gone all right.’

‘Have we traced him?’

‘Doing it now, checking on the airports and ferries. Trail will have gone cold; he left the day before yesterday. He’s done a flit, defected, no question about it. There’ll be hell to pay on this one, mark my words.’