Читать книгу The High Commissioner - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 7
ОглавлениеJohn James Quentin (Corliss):
Born: Tumbarumba, New South Wales, July 15, 1915.
Parents: Peter Corliss and Ida Fahey Corliss died in car accident October 12, 1925. Corliss, only child, then raised by aunt, Mira Fahey, spinster, who died January 22, 1934.
Corliss moved to Sydney February 1934, joined Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board as trainee surveyor.
Married Freda Wiseman, previously Weitzmann, August 20, 1936. No children of marriage. Weitzmann had arrived in Australia alone from Vienna January 1936. No relatives of hers have been traced.
Stabbed corpse of Freda Corliss discovered by neighbour December 9, 1941. One wound in right breast, inflicted by sewing scissors.
Corliss disappeared. Reappeared as John Quentin May 12, 1942, date of voluntary enlistment in Royal Australian Navy at Perth, Western Australia.
Married Sheila Redmond, daughter of Leslie Redmond and Elizabeth Cousins Redmond, both deceased, Perth, July 10, 1942. No children of marriage . . .
“Would you please fasten your seat belts? We shall be landing at London Airport—”
Malone closed the file and put it back in his brief-case. It was a comprehensive file, sixty pages thick, a monument to the diligence of the researcher. On the trip over Malone had read it three times, reading it at night when the passenger beside him, a talkative grandmother, had been asleep. She had got off at Zürich (“Then I’m going down to Rome. To see the Pope. I’m a Presbyterian myself, but we can’t all be bigots, can we?”), and the seat beside Malone had since been empty. In this last half-hour, free from interruptions and the grandmother’s inquisitive eye, he had been trying to memorise the summary that was attached to the file. The more he read, the more he could taste the relish with which the researcher had worked: he really had enjoyed the change from dry political statistics and trying to guess the voters’ intentions. John Quentin (or Corliss) had been pinned to these pages like a dead butterfly.
But the researcher had, in the final analysis, failed. He had pinned a specimen to a board, described its history, illustrated some of its characteristics; but John Quentin was still no more than a name (or two names) and a collection of facts; the researcher had not discovered what made him tick. And Malone had begun to feel the first stirring of an unease that had not troubled him since he had been sent out, years ago, to make his first arrest. Over the years he had come to appreciate that the less you knew about a man, the less you were involved emotionally when it came time to bring him in. Now, however, a personality, like a faint watermark, was hidden behind the typed facts; and, despite himself, Malone was intrigued by it. And for a policeman that way could lead to headaches. Subjectivity, he had heard Leeds say, was as corrupting as money.
Twenty minutes later the immigration officer was looking at his passport. “Police officer? On duty, sir?”
Malone shook his head. “Holiday.”
“Enjoy yourself.”
“Thanks,” said Malone, and wondered when he had last enjoyed an arrest. He could for a while hate a murderer who had committed a particularly horrible crime, the callous bashing of an old woman or the rape and killing of a young child; but later there would come the moments of doubt, the wonder at what had caused the flaw in the murderer. He didn’t believe all of the psychiatrists’ theories that the flaw in any man could be found in his childhood; he was old-fashioned enough to believe that some men were born bad. But why? He often asked himself, and left himself open to further questions that bothered him more than his colleagues suspected. He had often thought that he would like to have worked on the case of Cain. After that all other murder cases might have been simple.
The flight had been delayed for hours by storms in Zürich, and now it was late afternoon as he rode in in the airport bus to London. He looked out at England, catching glimpses of it from the motorway. He had never dreamed of travelling the wide world; well aware of his insularity and able to smile at himself, he had always been content with Australia and what it offered him. He was no explorer. Columbus, Magellan, Cook were men who probably would never have been happy while there was a horizon to draw them. Up till now, at thirty-one, horizons had meant little to him.
But England now was not something beyond the horizon; it was here around him. He could feel his excitement and interest growing; it was a pity that he was going to have no more than a day or two here. Perversely he began to hope that Quentin might fight the warrant, might ask for extradition procedure. It would play hell with Australia’s good name, but it would at least give Malone time to look at London. Then he cursed himself for his lack of patriotism. He was as hypocritical as Flannery.
He checked in at a hotel in Cromwell Road in Kensington. The affable Irish porter showed him to his room, talking a torrent all the way. “Ah, we get a lot of Aussies here at the hotel, sir. It must be a grand country, the numbers of you that are always coming over here.” Malone looked at the porter, but the latter wasn’t being sarcastic, only Irish. “Would you be on business, sir?”
“No, holiday.” Malone took out his note-book and looked at an address. “Is Belgrave Square far from here?”
The porter put down the bags. “Not far, sir. Was it an embassy you were wanting?” He had an Irishman’s frank curiosity: no one in Multinahone had had any secrets.
“No. Just friends.”
The porter’s eyebrows went up. “It’s a posh area, that it is, sir.”
“I have posh friends.”
The Irishman recognised the rebuff: some Aussies were just like the bloody English, keeping everything to themselves. He gave Malone directions on how to get to Belgrave Square and went out of the room, wondering why a man who stayed in a thirty-bob bed-and-breakfast room and who gave only a shilling tip should have posh friends in Belgravia.
Malone, a relaxed man who could sleep anywhere, even in an economy class airplane seat, was not tired by the long flight from Australia. He showered, changed into the light grey suit he had brought as a concession to the English summer, looked at his watch and decided to go and see Quentin at once. He had already made up his mind that he would confront Quentin with the arrest warrant at his home and not at his office at Australia House. He had never arrested a public official before and he did not want to be too public about it. Seven o’clock. The High Commissioner would probably be home now, doing whatever ambassadors did in their off-duty moments, having a bath, having a drink, wondering why they hadn’t taken up something easy like mountaineering or gun-running. It must be a bastard of a life, Malone thought: even the small diplomacies of a policeman’s life were difficult enough. But soon it would be over for Quentin.
Riding in the taxi towards Belgravia Malone tried to rehearse what he would say to Quentin; and after a while gave up. How did you face a man, secure in a new life and a new identity, almost impregnable behind the importance of his office, with a crime that was distant in time and place, ten thousand miles and twenty-three years from here and now? “Your Excellency, in regard to an ancient murder . . .” Malone gazed out of the window of the taxi, trying to make his mind a blank, trusting that the right words would come by instinct when the moment arrived. Habit, sometimes, was a comfort.
The taxi pulled in before the big four-storied house. Malone got out and conditioned by another habit paid the driver the exact amount on the meter.
“You Aussies,” said the driver, an economist from Bethnal Green. “I bet you don’t have any balance of payments deficit.”
Malone, who had never tipped a taxi-driver in his life, looked at the man blankly. “Belt up,” said the latter, and drove off, gnashing his gears instead of his teeth.
Malone shrugged, beginning to appreciate why someone had once written that the English were incomprehensible, and turned towards the house. He was surprised at its size; he was a long way from the five-roomed house in Erskineville where he had grown up. Then he looked at the other houses in the square and saw that some of them were even bigger; this square was a manifestation of living that he had only read about. This was diplomatic territory; above almost every entrance there jutted a white flagpole, like a single blunt-tipped mammoth’s tusk; the huge front doors had the magnificent discouragement of a butler’s façade. The heavily elegant cliff-faces of the houses hid secrets that exercised the British Government; but none of them held such a secret as this house behind him. He turned, hesitated, then pressed the bell firmly.
II
The door was opened by a butler, something Malone had never experienced in his life before. He had all the appearance of the butlers Malone had seen in films: tall, portly, his aristocratic nose pushed back by a smell not apparent to men with less sensitive olfactory organs. But when he spoke his rich purple voice had a foreign tinge to it, and at once Malone thought he had come to the wrong address.
“Is this the home of the Australian High Commissioner?”
“It is, sir. May we ask whom you wish to see?” Monarchs and butlers, Malone thought: who else has the right to speak in the royal plural?
“The High Commissioner. My name is Malone and I have a special message for him from the Premier of New South Wales.”
The butler looked suspiciously at him, then he stood aside, opening the door wider. Malone stepped into an entrance hall and waited while the butler, like a bishop on his way to the altar, did a slow march towards the rear of the house. Though the hall was only sparsely furnished, Malone was at once aware that he was on the close outskirts of luxury. Through a half-open door he caught a glimpse of a room that reminded him of illustrations he had seen in Vogue, a periodical that had once been delivered by mistake to the Murder Squad and reduced the officers there to a state of depressed inferiority. He turned his head and saw himself in a huge gilt-framed mirror: he looked at the stranger there who seemed so out of place. He shifted his feet nervously in the thick carpet of the hall, feeling as awkward as a three-legged colt. Suddenly he wanted this business of Quentin over and done with quickly. He would come back in his old age and look at London.
The butler came back down the hall with a girl. He stood aside, watchful as an old sea-lion; images kept flashing through Malone’s mind, but he could not see the butler as just a man like himself. The girl came forward.
“I am the High Commissioner’s secretary.” She, too, had a slight accent. Stone the bloody crows, Malone thought, whatever happened to the Australian accent? “What was it you wanted?”
“I have a personal message from the Premier of New South Wales.” He had no such thing; but he had not expected it to be so difficult to get in to see Quentin.
“A letter?”
“No, it’s verbal.”
“I’m sorry, but the High Commissioner is busy. Could you not come to Australia House tomorrow?”
Malone shook his head, trying not to appear too stubborn. He liked the look of the girl: tall, good-looking, blonde, and with a poise about her that he had looked for in the girls he had known and had so rarely found. But he sensed her impatience with him and he was aware of the cold disapproving eye of the butler. “The message is urgent and important.”
The girl looked at the butler, and Malone read the message that passed between them. They think I’m some crank! He was appalled at the idea, remembering his own impatience as a policeman with cranks. His hand moved towards his pocket to take out his identification badge. Then his hand dropped back to his side and he smiled to himself at the situation and his own reaction to it.
“Perhaps if you told the High Commissioner that the message concerns Tumbarumba, he might see me.”
“Tumbarumba?” The girl was now convinced she was dealing with a crank.
“It’s a town, not a disease.” This comes of employing foreigners, Malone thought; and began to feel more xenophobic by the minute. He had always been tolerant of the foreign migrants who had come to Australia, even those he had had to arrest; but now these two foreigners, the girl and the butler, were beginning to annoy him with their attitude towards him. Deep inside him he knew that regardless of their accents, they were only doing their job of trying to protect the High Commissioner from uninvited and unwanted guests. But they were also trying to prevent him from doing his job, one that he wanted finished as soon as possible. He was out of his depth here, in alien territory no matter that his country’s ambassador lived here, and he wanted to be on the plane at once for Sydney, home and an atmosphere where he didn’t have to be so secretive. He said sharply, “Just tell the High Commissioner that I’ve come from Tumbarumba.”
The girl raised an eyebrow, as if recognising for the first time that Malone was accustomed to some authority. Without a word, but with a nod of warning to the butler, she turned and went back along the hall. Malone and the butler stood watching each other in the huge mirror: they were posed in the gilt frame like a tableau titled Suspicion. Then the girl came back.
“This way, Mr.—”
“Malone.”
“Mr. Malone. The High Commissioner will see you.” Her poise had been cracked a little; there was no mistaking the surprise she felt that the ambassador had agreed to see this crank.
She led Malone down the hall, pushed open a door and stood aside. “Mr. Malone, sir, from Tumbarumba.”
“We are not to be disturbed, Lisa,” said the man standing in front of the marble-fronted fireplace. “By anyone.”
The girl closed the door. Malone, feeling more awkward than he had ever felt in his life before, stood watching the man across the room from him. He had checked on newspaper photographs of Quentin; but they had not done the man justice. He was taller than Malone had expected, and slimmer. His thick wavy hair, brushed close to his head, and his military moustache were grey, but somehow they did not add age to his lean high-cheeked face; Malone would have guessed him to be at least five to six years younger than the age that showed against him in the file. The wide sensitive mouth looked as if it knew the exercises of humour, and the dark blue eyes looked as if they, too, could smile with enjoyment. But not now: eyes and mouth were both stiff with suspicion.
“What is it, Mr. Malone?” Quentin’s voice, Malone guessed, would normally have been deep and pleasant. Now it was strained, a little high: the Australian accent was evident, the vowels flattened. “My secretary said you were from Tumbarumba.”
“I’m from Sydney, sir. Detective-Sergeant Malone.” He produced his badge, glad of the opportunity to do so; for the time being there was no longer any need for secrecy. “I’m sorry, Mr. Quentin, but I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of your wife Freda.”
Quentin, for all the stiff suspicion in his face, had been standing at ease before the fireplace. Now all at once he seemed to wilt: years piled into his face like grey blood and he looked his age and more. Behind his head an ormolu clock ticked like a bomb; but the bomb had already gone off. The lips, as grey now as the moustache above them, grimaced in a thin smile.
“Tumbarumba – what a password!”
“I had to try something, sir. Your secretary is quite a watch-dog.”
“But not quite good enough. I should have warned her about policemen.” He put his hands together in front of his face and bowed his head like a man in prayer. Malone had seen many reactions to arrest and he had never got over his embarrassment at some of them. He just hoped Quentin was not going to start praying out loud. But then Quentin looked up and his mouth was twisted in the same thin grimace of a smile. “I’ve often wondered what I would say to you when you came. Somehow it was a speech that never got written. And I’m said to be a very good speaker.”
“I’d save it for the trial, sir. I’m supposed to warn you—”
“I know, Sergeant. But anything I may say now won’t help you very much. You wouldn’t be here unless you had a watertight case. You don’t go around arresting ambassadors to keep up your monthly quota, do you?” He smiled without rancour. As quickly as he had wilted he was now becoming philosophical. His voice had deepened, come under control again; the Australian accent was still there but less evident, the vowels were being given their full value. He moved towards a side table on which stood a decanter and glasses. “A sherry? Or don’t you drink on duty?”
“Where I grew up, sir, sherry isn’t considered a drink. It’s something you flavour jelly or trifle with.”
“You are looking a gift prisoner in the mouth, Sergeant. But I admire your sense of occasion. Sherry is for vicars and old ladies.” He smiled again, a much warmer smile. He put down the decanter without taking the stopper from it, pulled a long tasselled cord hanging beside the fireplace. When he turned back the smile had waned. “I must have grown up in the same sort of circles as you, Sergeant. A pity I ever left them. I wonder what Tumbarumba is like now?”
There was a knock at the door and the butler opened it. Quentin ordered Scotch, then turned back to Malone as the door closed again. He stared at the detective for a long moment, then he moved to a high-backed leather arm-chair and sat down slowly and a little wearily. He gestured at the room about him, and Malone, looking about him for the first time, saw that it was a small library. Books lined three of the walls: leather-bound volumes, large illustrated books, bright-jacketed novels, sombre-titled non-fiction: Quentin, or someone in the house, had a wide taste in reading. The fourth wall held some sporting prints: spindle-shanked horses straddled hedges, a fighter in long underwear posed behind bare fists and a walrus moustache. On a small desk a woman looked with calm eyes from out of a silver frame: she looked out of place beneath the sporting prints, too much of a lady.
“This is my retreat. A diplomat doesn’t get much time to himself and he needs somewhere where he can lock himself away for an hour or so every day, just so he can be himself. All day and every day, and every night too, almost, you’re being someone else. Mr. Australia, if you like, or whatever country you represent. You need some time each day just so you can check your own identity, make sure there’s some of the original man left.” He sighed and looked up at Malone, still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. “I’ve spent almost twenty-four years trying to lose the original man. John Corliss, that is. How did you get on to him?”
Malone told him about the political research worker. “I don’t know who gave them the tip-off. It could have been someone who recognised you from years ago.”
Quentin nodded. “It’s been a long wait. Somehow I always knew the day would come. I’ve changed in appearance. My hair went grey during the war, then afterwards I grew this moustache. But you never feel you’re really changed, you see yourself from the inside—”
They were interrupted by the return of the butler with the drinks. “Madame asks will you be long, sir?”
“Not long, Joseph.” Quentin waited till the butler had gone out of the room. He poured himself and Malone a drink each, both of them strong: he seemed to take for granted that Malone was as much in need of sustenance as himself. Malone, grateful for the drink, didn’t contradict him. “When this matter comes out into the open, Joseph is the one who’s going to disapprove of me more than anyone else. There’s no snob like a butler, and a Hungarian butler is the worst of the lot.”
“I wondered about his accent. And your secretary’s, too.” Malone held up his glass, then lowered it. “Sorry. I was going to drink to your health.”
Quentin smiled wryly. “Thank you. I’m glad they sent a man with some sensitivity.” He raised his own glass and they drank silently to each other. Then Quentin said, “Yes, about my secretary. She’s Dutch. A Dutch New Australian. She was out there for seven or eight years. Joseph’s never been there and somehow I gather he’s glad of the fact. I inherited him from my predecessor. I think he still expects to be asked some day to serve witchetty grubs and fried ants.” He sipped his drink, then took a swift gulp, put down the glass and looked up at Malone. “I’m just talking, Sergeant. Putting off the evil moment or whatever it is. What’s the next move?”
Malone told him. “We’d like it if it can be done as quietly as possible. I can get an extradition order from the court here if you insist—”
Quentin waved a long-fingered hand. “There won’t be any need for that. I’ll go quietly, as the saying is.”
“Could you be ready to leave tomorrow?”
Quentin’s chin shot up. “When? Sergeant, don’t you read the newspapers? I’m in the middle of a conference, an important one—”
“I know, sir.” Malone sipped his own drink, hating more and more each minute this task he had been given. He still stood in the middle of the room, feeling as insecure as if he were the one who was being arrested. “But I’m afraid I haven’t been given much discretion in the matter. They want you back in Sydney at once.”
“Who does? The police? Or is it Flannery?” Malone hesitated, then nodded. Quentin barked angrily and went on: “That malicious conniving old bastard! You know why he’s doing this, don’t you?”
“I had it explained to me.”
“Not by him, I’ll bet!” Quentin got up and began to walk about the room, angrily, agitatedly; all his poise had left him, the past had caught him up, was riding his back like a savage monkey. The ormolu clock struck the half-hour and was echoed somewhere out in the hall by a deeper note. Quentin stopped, looked at the clock, then shrugged, as if time meant nothing now. But when he spoke again, his voice was still harsh, the flat accent back again. This was the voice he must have had twenty-odd years ago, Malone thought: the original man was always there in the tongue. “He’d be too shrewd to commit himself that far in front of a stranger. You are a stranger to him, aren’t you?”
“Very much so.” And glad to stay that way: Malone took another drink, washing away a taste that had been with him all the way from Sydney.
Quentin turned and looked directly at Malone. “Sergeant, I can’t afford to leave here for at least another four or five days. This conference, you know what it’s about, trying to settle a cease-fire in Viet Nam, it’s much more important than me or Flannery.” He hesitated, then his voice hoarsened: “Or even my dead first wife.”
Malone put down his glass on a nearby table. It was time to show some authority, to get started for home. “I appreciate all that. But it’s not my decision—”
“Whose is it?”
Malone hesitated. “The Commissioner’s, I suppose.”
“Get on to him, phone him. Tell him I promise to come quietly, but I must stay here till this conference is finished.”
“How do you know it will be finished in four or five days?”
Quentin gestured, a motion that already suggested lack of real hope. “If it isn’t – well, Viet Nam then will have about as much future as I have. We’ll both have reached the end of our roads.”
“Why is it so important that you stay?”
Quentin was patient. “I’m Australia’s leading representative at the conference. In the normal course of events it would be our Minister of External Affairs, but he’s still in Canberra ill. None of the other Cabinet Ministers know as much about South-East Asia as I do – some of them know nothing about it. So I was pitched into the job.” There was a note of regret in his voice: Malone couldn’t tell whether he regretted being handed the job or being taken away from it. He looked at Malone, still patient, sounding as if it were a long time since he had talked to an ordinary man in the street: “How much do you know about international politics?”
“Not much,” Malone admitted. “A policeman’s problems are usually too close to home. It’s hard to get any sort of perspective. Or find time to be interested, come to that.”
“That’s the way it is with about ninety per cent of the world’s population. They read the papers, but they don’t really care. A nice juicy murder—” He stopped and shook his head as if he had suddenly been hit a blow. “That’s what they’ll get next week, isn’t it?”
It was Malone’s turn to be patient: “You were explaining to me about this conference.”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Well—” He drew in his breath, regained control of himself: his powers of recovery were quick and remarkable. “There are several interests who don’t want a cease-fire in Viet Nam. If this conference could be interrupted, adjourned, even called off altogether, nothing would please them more. I’m not boasting, Sergeant, but I think I’m the one at this conference that the other delegates are listening to. Everybody at it has opinions, but too many of them are waiting for someone else to make the moves that might bring about peace terms. For better or worse, I look like being the man. By the end of this week I think I can swing them to some sort of terms for a cease-fire, one that should satisfy both sides. For the time being, anyway. In another year or two they may be back at each other’s throats again. Maybe even America and China will be in there in a full-scale war. I don’t know. But we’ll have bought some more time, thrown the military mind out of step while we try and see if the diplomatic mind can accomplish anything. Diplomacy has been down-graded these last few years since the generals have been given so much say in certain countries. I think it’s time we showed it’s not a dead method of working.” There was a knock on the door, but he ignored it. “That’s what I want to buy from your Commissioner – some time.”
Before Malone could answer, the door opened. “I’m sorry, John, but shall I have Lisa call them and tell them we can’t come?”
The woman who stood in the doorway was the most beautiful Malone had ever seen: the photograph on the desk had not done her justice. Perhaps it had something to do with the way she was dressed; none of the girls he had known back home had ever looked so elegant. She was not tall, but she gave the impression of tallness; she held herself erect, almost with a touch of imperiousness. He could only guess at her age, but he knew she must be in her early forties: she had married Quentin twenty-three years ago. But the erosion of age had not yet got at her, you knew she would look as beautiful as this for another ten years at least. The dark auburn hair, shining like metal; the complexion that looked as if it would be impregnable to the slow ivy-growth of wrinkles; the hazel eyes with their heavy lids: Malone, looking at her, knew she would protect those assets with a fierce pride, fighting age with more determination than most women. Then she smiled at him and the image of imperiousness and pride was suddenly gone, as if it had been no more than a trick of eyesight.
“I hope you will excuse me for interrupting—”
“Darling, this is Mr. Malone. From Canberra.” Malone looked at Quentin, but the latter had moved forward to take the woman’s hand. “This is my wife, Mr. Malone.”
Malone put out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Quentin.”
Sheila Quentin gave him her hand and smiled again. “And I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Malone. Are you here to stay in London or just visiting?”
“Just visiting,” said Malone, and glanced at Quentin.
“He’s here till the end of the conference.” Quentin was relaxed, almost casual; Malone could have been a minor government official who had called to pay his respects. “He’s been sent with some new advice.”
“Oh? Are you an expert on Viet Nam, Mr. Malone?”
“Not exactly.” Malone wondered what Quentin’s game was, but he decided to play along for the time being. It was a question he would not have dared to offer advice on: when you were arrested for murder, how and when did you tell your wife? “You might say I’m a legal expert. I know how far you can go in the prevention of certain things.”
Quentin’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. “We’ll be another ten minutes, darling, no more.”
“Good night, Mr. Malone. Perhaps we’ll meet again before you leave London.” She went out, her long green gown rustling like dead leaves in the quiet room.
The silence lasted for almost a minute after the door closed. Malone had become accustomed to silences; it was remarkable the number of men who remained dumb when you arrested them for a serious crime. But Quentin was not dumb because of his arrest: he was staring at the closed door, obviously wondering what effect his arrest would have on his wife, whether she would be struck dumb or would collapse in loud hysterics. Somehow Malone did not think there would be any hysterics from Mrs. Quentin: there would be something more terrible, a cold rage at himself for what he represented, for what he had done to her husband. He had seen the look that had passed between the Quentins: they were deeply in love with each other. And he knew from experience that a woman in love never saw the merits of justice.
At last Quentin said, “You’re wondering why I didn’t tell her who you really are? I’ve been rehearsing the words on and off for years. Darling, this is the policeman who’s come to arrest me for the murder of my first wife, the one you know nothing about. I’m a politician and a diplomat, Sergeant, supposedly skilled in all the uses of words. How do you deliver such a message to the wife you love dearly?”
Malone shook his head. He had had many awkward and distressing messages to deliver, but never to someone he loved: he dealt in tragedy, but remained outside it: he was like the heroin dealer who lived the good clean life. “I don’t want to have to tell her myself—”
“You won’t have to. When the times comes, I’ll tell her. I’m not a coward.” Then he bit his lip and turned away. “Or maybe I am. Always have been.”
“Do you still want me to phone the Commissioner? I mean, I don’t want to take you away from this conference if you feel—”
Quentin looked at his watch. “It’ll be almost five o’clock in the morning out there. Do you want to phone him at his home?”
“How soon could I get through?”
“I can get you priority.” He smiled wryly; from now on all jokes would be against himself. “I may not have that privilege much longer.”
Malone checked Leeds’s home phone number from his note-book and gave it to Quentin. The latter picked up the phone and dialled. “This is the Australian High Commissioner at—” He gave his own number. “I want a top priority person-to-person call to Mr. John Leeds at—” He read from the note-book Malone held out to him. “Will you ring me back, confirming and telling me how long it will be?”
He hung up the phone and Malone said, “If the Commissioner okays this, you know I can’t let you out of my sight for those four or five days. Technically you’re already under arrest.”
“I wonder if I could get the P.M. to put up bail for me?” Again he smiled wryly; then he said, “You won’t trust me?”
“Don’t put it like that, Mr. Quentin.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked curiously at Malone. “I have the feeling you’re not enjoying this assignment. Am I right?”
“There’s a lot of police work I don’t enjoy. We’re not all bastards, you know.” Malone held back. He was coming to like this man more than he should. Flannery had been right: He’s not a bad bloke at all.
“I suppose it’s like politics.”
“And diplomacy, too?”
Quentin looked at him, then nodded. “Everything is compromise. Only the saints escape, and they never go into politics or diplomacy.”
“Or police work,” said Malone, and after a slight hesitation both men smiled at each other.
The phone rang and Quentin picked it up. After a few words he looked at Malone. “The call will be through in twenty minutes.”
“I hope for your sake he’s in a good humour at five o’clock in the morning.”
“Not for my sake,” said Quentin, hanging up the phone. “That’s not why I’m asking for the extra time.”
“Sorry,” said Malone, and began to wonder what sort of man Quentin had been twenty-three years ago when he had murdered his wife.
“I have to get dressed now. There’s a reception at one of the African embassies. Do you want to come with me to that?”
“Am I dressed for it?”
Quentin looked at the very pale grey suit, the blue nylon shirt and the green-figured tie that looked like an aunt’s present. “At the risk of offending you, Sergeant, I don’t think you’re dressed for anything in London. Where do you buy your clothes back home?”
Malone grinned: he had been criticised many times before for his lack of interest in clothes. “The first shop I come to. I’ve never been much of a dresser.”
“I admire your modesty, but you certainly speak the truth. Have you ever worn tails?” Malone shook his head. “You’re going to tonight. We’re about the same size, you can wear my spare set. What size shoes do you take?”
“Eight and a half. I haven’t got policeman’s feet.”
“The same size as mine. You can step into my shoes tonight, Sergeant, have a look at my world. You might understand why I’m going to be reluctant to leave it. It has its drawbacks, but I enjoy it.”
Malone began to protest. “Look, I don’t want to crowd you, sir – I’ll wait outside—”
“I feel I owe you something, Sergeant—” He gestured at the phone. “If I’m to keep you here in London longer than you expected, I’ll see you get more out of it than waiting around in doorways.”
“What will your wife say? I mean about lending me your clothes? Won’t she ask some awkward questions?”
“My wife trusts me, Sergeant. She never asks too many questions. A diplomat’s wife learns not to.” Then he sighed. “There’ll be enough questions after I’ve told her who you really are.”
