Читать книгу The Harry Palmer Quartet - Len Deighton - Страница 41

[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) A good week for your hobbies and romance, but you can expect some difficulties with evening arrangements. Forthright talking may clear the air.]

Jay’s Rolls purred along the Cromwell Road until it turned off near the Brompton Oratory. Those gaunt Victorian houses, built at the time of the 1851 Exhibition, stared down at us. Cars were parked densely along the pavements, sports cars and snob cars and cars wrapped in silvery sheets of material. We turned off the road when Jay rolled to a standstill outside a big conversion. We closed the doors quietly and moved quickly enough to see the portly form of Jay entering the front door. It was a ‘tasteful’ piece of contemporary; natural wood-finish doors, stainless-steel windows and venetian blinds everywhere. Waterman and I peered at the list of names and bell pushes.

‘You may as well go in,’ said a tall, bespectacled city gent behind us, opening the door with a key. We went in, partly because it was convenient for us, partly because there were two more city gents behind us, and partly because they were all holding small 9mm Italian Mod 34 Beretta automatic pistols.

The man who had spoken pushed the top bell and spoke into the small metal microphone. ‘Yes. There’s two of them. One of them could be a policeman,’ he said. They had been tailing us, and to add insult to injury had been discussing us over car to car radio-phones.

I then heard Jay’s voice, ‘Put the gentlemen on the detector and bring them in, Maurice.’ I looked at Waterman – the edges of his stained moustache turned down: we’d been a couple of right ninnies. Followed all the way! I should have guessed that Jay meeting Dalby would take some ‘beef’ with him. I wondered if Dalby had phoned Jay about Murray: found unconscious in his flowers.

The entrance hall was all black mirrors, fresh flowers and genuine cut-glass chandeliers. We were stood up before the full-length mirror. There was a small buzzing noise and I was deprived of my gun by Maurice who stood well clear of his colleague’s line of fire. Maurice was very professional. If you could afford a Phantom IV you could afford the best in hoodlums. We were taken upstairs.

The forty-foot living-room was ankle deep in cream-coloured long-tufted carpeting. The white walls were punctuated with large abstract paintings: Rothko, Motherwell and Hitchens. At the far end of the room a circular black-marble table of knee height, surrounded by low black-leather armchairs with high wing backs, made a cosy corner round the gigantic hi-fi unit, and TV that was telling us that ‘Trill makes budgies bounce with health’ over and over again.

At ‘our’ end of the room Jay’s voice, a rather rich detergent-advertising voice, floated through the open doorway. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

The three city gents withdrew like the Beverley Sisters taking a curtain, but we all knew they were no farther than the thickness of the door away.

‘This is Mr Waterman,’ I said loudly to the invisible Jay, ‘of Waterman’s Detective Agency. I hired him this afternoon.’ There was only silence so I spoke again even more loudly, clearly enunciating my words as one would speak to a rich deaf uncle. ‘I don’t think there is anything further from Mr Waterman. He may as well go home now.’

There was silence, then Jay’s voice, ‘Do you owe Mr Waterman any money?’

‘Fifteen guineas,’ I said, ‘but I thought you would want to fix it.’

Jay must have pressed a button for I heard a soft buzzer. The door opened so quickly that Maurice must have been standing with his hand on the handle.

‘What kept you, Maurice?’ I said. I hated Maurice; he was so polite and restrained. He stood there without speaking. His spectacles were clean and efficient – the glass emphasized the deadly little eyes through which he dispassionately viewed his world, of which I was, for the time being, a part. Again came Jay’s instruction. ‘Maurice, you will let Mr Waterman here have a cheque for fifteen guineas. The number three account, Maurice. Then you will show Mr Waterman to the door.’ Maurice nodded even though Jay couldn’t see him.

Mr Waterman was pinching large sections of his nicotine-stained little moustache between index finger and thumb, and twisting it until it pained him. Mr Waterman also nodded. Mr Waterman must go. Mr Waterman was feeling a little out of place. Money is money but even at fifteen guineas a time he felt he must go. ‘Good-bye Mr Waterman,’ I said, and Mr Waterman left us.

I wanted to see what Jay was doing in the little annexe without a door. I could hear him moving around. I knew these big Kensington houses; visitors just never participate. I walked across to the doorway. I don’t know what I expected to see Jay doing. Sitting in front of bubbling test tubes like a Bela Lugosi movie. Watching ‘This is your Life’, or perhaps cultivating hot-house orchids.

‘You are interested in cooking?’ Jay looked much older than I remembered him, and against the white cook’s apron, strapped over one shoulder in the French manner, his complexion was rubicund as is a heavy drinker’s. In his hand he held a three-pound lobster. The kitchen was illuminated by merciless daylight tubes. Copper, stainless steel and sharp knives were distributed with the careful forethought of an operating theatre. A kitchen with such a maze of scientific aids that would make Cape Canaveral look like a rectangular wheel. Jay put the fresh mottled black and verdigris lobster down on the white counter and picked a bottle of Moet & Chandon out of the ice bucket with a happy tinkle. He poured two generous glasses full.

‘I could get interested,’ I said.

‘That’s right,’ said Jay, and I began to drink the cool clear bubbling drink.

I said, ‘Didn’t Lao-Tze say something like “Govern the Empire as you would cook a little fish”?’

Jay warmed to me. A smile peeped around his giant moustache. ‘Montaigne said, “Great men pride themselves on knowing how to prepare a fish for table,”’ he answered.

‘But did he mean it as a compliment?’ I asked.

Jay didn’t answer; he was driving a long metal rod through the lobster. I sipped the cold champagne.

‘It’s quite dead,’ said Jay. I could see it was a difficult job. ‘I just can’t bear killing things,’ he told me. He’d finished getting the lobster on the spit. ‘You know, I have to get the fish merchant to kill it for me.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some people are like that, I know.’

‘A little more champagne,’ he said. ‘I only need half a bottle for this recipe, and I don’t like to drink too much.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and I meant it. It was hot in that kitchen.

He poured the remainder of the bottle into a metal tray and threw a little salt into it. ‘You’re a cool young man,’ he said. ‘Don’t you care about your friend Cavendish?’ He added a large piece of butter to the champagne. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect that the butter would float. I remember watching and thinking ‘It only does that because Jay put it in.’ I sipped my champagne again.

Jay picked up his champagne and drank some – he watched me intently through his tiny little eyes. ‘I run a very big business.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, but Jay waved his big red hand.

‘Bigger,’ he said. ‘Bigger than you know.’ I said nothing. Jay had a jar down from the shelf and sprinkled a few peppercorns into the champagne. He carefully carried the tray and limping across the tiny kitchen clipped it into the radiant heat vertical grill. He picked up the lobster that he couldn’t bear to kill and waved it at me.

‘The fishmonger sells fish. Right?’ he said, and fixed it to the grill. ‘The wine merchant sells champagne. The French don’t protest at the idea of their champagne leaving France. Right?’

‘Right,’ I said. I was beginning to recognize my cue.

‘You.’ I wondered what I sold. Jay switched on the grill and the lobster, lit bright red on one side by the electric element, began to revolve very very slowly. ‘You,’ said Jay again, ‘sell loyalty.’ He stared at me. ‘I don’t do that: I wouldn’t do it.’ For a moment I thought even Jay thinks I have changed sides, but I realized that it was Jay’s way of talking. He went on, ‘I sell people.’

‘Like Eichmann?’ I asked.

‘I don’t like that sort of joke,’ said Jay like a Sunday-school teacher at the Folies Bergères. Then his face cracked into a little grin. ‘More like Eichelhauer let’s say.’ That was the German name for Jay. Jay, I thought. Garrulus glandarius rufitergum. Jay: egg thief, bully of birds and raider of crops, lurking, cautious Jay who flies in clumsy undulating hops. ‘I deal in talented men exchanging employment of their own free will.’

‘You’re a talent scout from the Kremlin?’ I said.

Jay began to baste the lobster that he didn’t like to kill with the champagne that he didn’t like to drink. He was thinking about what I said. I could see why Jay was such a big success. He took everything at its face value. I still don’t know if Jay thought he was a talent scout from the Kremlin because the wall phone rang in the kitchen. Jay stopped basting long enough to wipe his hands. He listened on the phone. ‘Put him through.’ A pause. ‘Then say I am at home.’ He moved round and fixed me with that basilisk’s stare that people holding phones have. He suddenly said to me, ‘We don’t smoke in the kitchen,’ then, uncupping the phone, ‘This is Maximilian speaking. My dear Henry.’ His face split open in a big smile. ‘I won’t say a word, my dear friend, just carry on. Yes, very well.’ I saw Jay push the ‘scramble’ button. Jay just listened, but his face was like Gielgud doing ‘The Seven Ages of Man’. Finally Jay said, ‘Thanks,’ and he hung up the phone thoughtfully, and began to baste the lobster again.

I puffed my cigarette. Jay watched me but said nothing. I decided the initiative in this conversation had passed to me. ‘Is it time to talk about the head-shrinking factory at Wood Green?’ I asked.

‘Head shrinking?’ Jay asked.

‘Brain Washing Incorporated: the place I jumped out of. Isn’t that what we’re leading up to?’

‘You think that I’m something to do with that?’ his face was 11 A.M. November 11th.

There was a knock on the door and Maurice brought a slip of paper to Jay. I tried to read it, but it was impossible. There may have been about fifty typewritten words there. Maurice left. Then I followed Jay across the big sitting-room. Near the radio and TV was a small machine like a typewriter carriage. It was a paper shredder. Jay fed the sheet in and pressed a button. It disappeared. Jay sat down.

‘Did they treat you badly at Wood Green?’ he said.

‘I was getting to like it,’ I said, ‘but I just couldn’t keep the payments up.’

‘You think it’s terrible.’ It was neither a question nor a statement.

‘I don’t think about it. I get paid to encounter all manner of things. I suppose some of them are terrible.’

‘In the Middle Ages,’ Jay went on as though he hadn’t heard, ‘they thought the cross-bow was the most terrible thing.’

‘That wasn’t because of the weapon itself, but because it threatened their system.’

‘That’s right,’ Jay said. ‘So we let them use the terrible weapon, but only upon Moslems. Right?’

‘That’s right,’ I said; now I was using his lines.

‘What you might call a policy of limited war upon subversive elements,’ Jay told me. ‘Yes, and now we have another terrible weapon; more terrible than nuclear explosions, more terrible than nerve gas, more terrible than the anti-matter bomb. But with this terrible weapon no one gets hurt; is that so terrible?’

‘Weapons aren’t terrible,’ I said. ‘Aeroplanes full of passengers to Paris, bombs full of insecticide, cannons with a man inside at a circus – these aren’t terrible. But a vase of roses in the hands of a man of evil intent is a murder weapon.’

‘My boy,’ said Jay, ‘if brain-washing had come to the world before the trial of Joan of Arc she would have lived to a happy old age.’

I said, ‘Yes, and France would still be full of mercenary soldiers.’

‘I thought you’d like that,’ said Jay. ‘You’re the English patriot.’

I was silent. Jay leaned forward from where he was sitting in the big black-leather armchair. ‘You can’t really believe that the Communist countries are going to collapse, and that this strange capitalist system will march proudly on.’ He tapped my knee. ‘We are both sensible, objective men, with, I think I might say, wide political experience. Neither of us could deny the comfort of it all,’ he stroked the rich leather, ‘but what has capitalism to offer? Its colonies that once were the goose that laid the golden egg, they are vanishing. The goose has found out where to sell the egg. The few places where a reactionary government has suppressed the socialist movement, why, in those places those governments are merely propped up by Fascist force, paid for in Western gold.’

Behind Jay’s voice I could hear the radio playing very quietly. An English jazz singer was even now Gee Whizzing, Waa Waa and Boop boop booping in an unparalleled plethora of idiocy. He noticed that I was listening, and his attack veered. What of the capitalist countries themselves? What of them then, racked with strikes, with mental illness, with insular disregard for their fellow men. On the brink of anarchy, their police beset by bribes, and by roving bands of overfed cowards seeking an outlet for the sadism that is endemic to capitalism, which is in any case licensed selfishness. Who do they pay their big rewards to? Musicians, aviators, poets, mathematicians? No! Degenerate young men who gain fame by not understanding music or having talent for singing. He’d timed his speech well, or he had luck, for he switched the radio across to the Home Service. It was time for the news. He went on talking, but I didn’t hear him. I could only hear the announcer saying. ‘The police are anxious to interview a man seen near the scene of the crime.’ There followed a fairly good description of me.

‘Cut out all this,’ I said to Jay. ‘Who killed Charlie Cavendish?’

Jay got up from his chair and went to look out of the window. He beckoned to me and I went to look out. There were two taxis parked across the street. At the bottom of the street was a single-decker bus. Jay switched on the FM radio, and tuned it to the police wave-length. A police walkietalkie outside the Victoria and Albert Museum was co-ordinating the movements.

‘We all did,’ said Jay. ‘You, me and them.’

One of the three men across the street leaned into the taxi-cab and we heard his voice saying, ‘I’m going across there now – pay particular attention to the back and the roofs. Street blocks! Hold everyone until further notice.’ It was Ross’s voice. The three men came across the road.

Jay turned to me. ‘One of these days, brainwashing will be the acknowledged method of dealing with anti-social elements. Criminals can be brain-washed. I’ve proved it. Nearly 300 people I’ve processed. It’s the greatest step forward of the century.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Maurice, we have callers.’ Jay gave me a broad calm smile. ‘Show them up, but tell them that I am already in custody.’ And I remembered other things about garrulus glandarius rufitergum – alert, tireless, excitable, vociferous, pairs for life, sociable in the spring but solitary at all other times.

Maurice let Ross and the two policemen in, and everyone shook hands with everyone. I’d never been pleased to see Ross before. They were taking no chances and the street blocks were kept in position for another hour. Ross was pretty cool with Jay, and he was searched and taken off to Carshalton, which was a house that Ross’s department owned for purposes unknown. When Jay came in to say good-bye, I noticed he had changed into a very fine grey-green mohair. I was mildly surprised to notice that he had a nuclear disarmament badge in his lapel. He saw me looking at it and removed it and pressed it into my hand without saying a word. Considering the place he was going, he could have given me the TV.

When all the commotion had faded, Ross said, a little patronizingly I thought, ‘And now I suppose you’ve got something that can’t wait another moment.’

I said, ‘I have, if you like homard à la broche,’ and I took him to the kitchen to show him.

Ross made a joke then. He said, ‘Do you come here often?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘I know the chef.’