A Perfect Spy (11 page)

“Any other cameras around?”

“No. If Magnus needs one for his work he brings it from the Embassy.”

“Any here from the Embassy now?”

“No.”

“Maybe his father caused it or maybe a lot of things did. Maybe a marital tiff I don't know about caused it.”

He was examining the camera's settings, turning it over in his big hands as if he were thinking of buying it.

“We don't have them,” she said.

His knowing eyes lifted to her. “How do you manage that?”

“He doesn't offer a fight, that's why.”

“You do though. You're a right little demon when you get going, Mary.”

“Not any more,” she said, mistrusting his charm.

“You never met his dad, did you?” said Brotherhood as he wound the film through the camera. “There was something about him, I seem to remember.”

“They were estranged.”

“Ah.”

“Nothing dramatic. They'd drifted apart. They're that sort of family.”

“What sort, dear?”

“Scattered. Business people. He'd said he'd let them in on his first marriage and once was enough. We hardly talked about it.”

“Tom go along with that?”

“Tom's a child.”

“Tom was the last person Magnus saw before he vanished, Mary. Apart from the porter at his club.”

“So arrest him,” Mary suggested rudely.

Dropping the film into the bin bag Brotherhood picked up Magnus's little transistor radio.

“This the new one they do with all the shortwave on it?”

“I believe so.”

“Take it with him on holiday, did he?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Listen to it regularly?”

“Since, as you once told me, he runs Czechoslovakia single-handed out here, it would be fairly startling if he didn't.”

He switched it on. A male voice was reading the news in Czech. Brotherhood stared blankly at the wall while he let it continue for what seemed like hours. He switched off the radio and put it in the bag. His gaze lifted to the uncurtained window, but it was still a long while before he spoke. “Not displaying too many lights for the time of morning, are we, Mary?” he asked distractedly. “Don't want to set neighbours chattering, do we?”

“They know Rick's dead. They know it's not a normal time.”

“You can say that again.”

I hate him. I always did. Even when I fell for him—when he was taking me up and down the scale and I was weeping and thanking him—I still hated him. Tell me about the night in question, he was saying. He meant the night they heard of Rick's death. She told it to him exactly as she had rehearsed it.

 

He had found the cloakroom and was standing before the worn dufflecoat that hung between Tom's loden and Mary's sheepskin. He was feeling in the pockets. The din from upstairs was monotonous. He extracted a grimy handkerchief and a half-consumed roll of Polo mints.

“You're teasing me,” he said.

“All right, I'm teasing you.”

“Two hours in the freezing snow in his dancing pumps, Mary? In the middle of the night? Brother Nigel will think I'm making it up. What did he do in them?”

“Walked.”

“Where to, dear?”

“He didn't tell me.”

“Ask him?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Then how do you know he didn't take a cab?”

“He'd no money. His wallet and change were upstairs in the dressing-room with his keys.” Brotherhood replaced the handkerchief and mints in the duffle.

“And none in here?”

“No.”

“How d'you know?”

“He's methodical in those things.”

“Maybe he paid the other end.”

“No.”

“Maybe someone picked him up.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He's a walker and he was in shock. That's why. His father was dead, even if he didn't particularly like him. It builds up in him. The tension or whatever it is. So he walks.” And I hugged him when he came back, she thought. I felt the cold on his cheek and the trembling of his chest and the hot sweat clean through his coat from his hours of walking. And I'll hug him again, as soon as he comes through that door. “I said to him: ‘Don't go. Not tonight. Get drunk. We'll get drunk together.' But he went. He had his look.” She wished she hadn't said that, but for a moment she was as cross with Magnus as she was with Brotherhood.

“What look is that, Mary? ‘Had his look.' I don't think I follow you.”

“Empty. Like an actor without a part.”

“A
part?
His father takes up and
dies
and Magnus doesn't have a
part
any more? What the hell does that mean?”

He's closing in on me, she thought, resolutely not answering. In a minute I'm going to feel his sure hands on me, and I'm going to lie back and let it happen because I can't think of any more excuses.

“Ask Grant,” she said, trying to hurt him. “He's our tame psychologist. He'll know.”

 

They had moved to the drawing-room. He was waiting for something. So was she. For Nigel, for Pym, for the telephone. For Georgie and Fergus upstairs.

“You're not doing too much of this, are you?” Brotherhood asked, pouring her another whisky.

“Of course not. When I'm alone, almost never.”

“Well, don't. It's too damn easy. And when Brother Nigel's here, nothing. Keep it under wraps completely. Yes, Jack?”

“Yes, Jack.” You're a lecherous priest scavenging the last of God's grace, she told him, watching his slow purposeful movements as he filled his own glass. First the wine, now the water. Now lower your eyelids and lift the chalice for a sanctimonious word with Him who sent you.

“And he's free,” he remarked. “‘I'm free.' Rick's dead, so Magnus is free. He's one of your Freudian types who can't say ‘Father.'”

“It's perfectly normal at his age. To call a father by his Christian name. More normal still, if you haven't seen each other for fifteen years.”

“I do like you to defend him,” Brotherhood said. “I admire your loyalty. So will they. And you never let me down. I know you didn't.”

Loyalty, she thought. Keeping my silly mouth shut round the Station in case your wife finds out.

“And you wept. Quite the old weeper, you are, Mary, I didn't know. Maryweeps, Magnus consoles her. Odd, that, to the casual observer, seeing as how Rick was
his
daddy, not yours. A rôle reversal with a vengeance, that is: you doing his mourning for him. Who were the tears for exactly? Any idea?”

“His father had died, Jack. I didn't sit down and say, ‘I'll cry for Rick, I'll cry for Magnus.' I just cried.”

“I thought it might be for yourself.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're the one person you didn't mention. That's all. Defensive: that's how you sound.”

“I am not being defensive!”

She was too loud. She knew it and once more so did Brotherhood and he was interested.

“And when Magnus is done with consoling Mary,” he continued, picking a book from the table and flipping through it, “he slips on his duffle and he goes for a walk in his dancing pumps. You try to restrain him—you beg him, which is hard for me to visualise, but I'll try—but no, he will go. Any phone calls before he leaves?”

“No.”

“No incoming, no outgoing?”

“I said no!”

“Direct dial, after all, you'd think a bereaved man would want to share the bad news with other members of his family.”

“They're not that kind of family. I told you.”

“There's Tom for a start. What about him?”

“It was much too late to ring Tom and anyway Magnus thought it better to tell him himself.”

He was looking at the book. “Another gem he's underlined. ‘If I am not for myself who is for me; and being for my own self what am I? If not now when?' Well, well. I'm enlightened. Are you?”

“No.”

“Nor am I. He's free.” He closed the book and put it back on the table. “He didn't take anything with him on his walk, did he? Like a briefcase?”

“A newspaper.”

You're going deaf. Admit it. You're worried that a hearing-aid will spoil your self-image. Speak, damn you!

She
had
said it. She knew she had. She had been waiting all evening to say it, prepared it from every possible angle, practised it, rehearsed it, denied it, forgotten it, revived it. And now it was echoing in her head like an explosion while she took a frightfully careless pull at her whisky. Yet his eyes, straight at her, were still waiting.

“A newspaper,” she repeated. “Just a newspaper. What of it?”

“Which newspaper?”

“The
Presse
.”

“That's a daily.”

“Correct.
Die Presse
is a daily.”

“A local daily newspaper. And Magnus took it with him. To read in the dark. Dressed in his dancing pumps. Tell me about it.”

“I just did, Jack.”

“No, you didn't. And you're going to have to, Mary, because when we get the heavy guns here you're going to need all the help you can get.”

She had perfect recall. Magnus was standing by the door, a step from where Brotherhood stood now. He was pale and untouchable, the dufflecoat flung crookedly over his shoulders while he glared round in stiff phases: fireplace, wife, clock, books. She heard herself telling him the things she had already recounted to Brotherhood, but more of them. For God's sake, Magnus, stay. Don't get the blacks, stay. Don't sink into one of your moods. Stay. Make love. Get drunk. If you want company, I'll get Grant and Bee back, or we'll go there. She saw him smile his rigid, bright-lit smile. She heard him put on his awfully easy voice. His Lesbos voice. And she heard herself repeat his words exactly, to Brotherhood, now.

“He said, ‘Mabs, where's the bloody paper, darling?' I thought he meant
The Times
for looking at the Scottish property market, so I said, ‘Wherever you put it when you brought it back from the Embassy.'”

“But he didn't mean
The Times,”
said Brotherhood.

“He went over to the rack—there—” She looked at it but didn't point, because she was terrified of giving too much importance to the gesture. “And helped himself. To
Die Presse.
From the rack, where the
Presse
is kept. Till the end of each week. He likes me to keep the back numbers. Then he walked out,” she ended, making it all sound perfectly normal, which of course it was.

“Did he look at it at all when he took it out?”

“Just the date. To check.”

“What did you suppose he wanted it for?”

“Maybe there was a late-night film.” Magnus had never gone to a late-night film in his life. “Maybe he wanted something to read in the café.” With no money on him, she thought, as she filled the void of Brotherhood's silence. “Maybe he was looking for distraction. As we all might be. Have been. Anyone might when they're bereaved.”

“Or free,” Brotherhood suggested. But he did not otherwise help her.

“Anyway, he was so upset he took the wrong day's,” she said brightly, clinching the matter.

“You looked, did you, dear?”

“Only when I was throwing away.”

“When were you doing that?”

“Yesterday.”

“Which one did he take?”

“Monday's. It was all of three days old. So I mean obviously he was in considerable shock.”

“Obviously.”

“All right, his father wasn't the great love of his life. But he was still dead. Nobody's rational when a thing like that happens. Not even Magnus.”

“So what did he do next? After he'd looked at the date and taken the wrong day's?”

“He went out. As I told you. For a walk. You don't listen. You never did.”

“Did he fold it?”

“Really, Jack! What does it matter how somebody carries a newspaper?”

“Just tuck in your ego a minute and answer. What did he do with it?”

“Rolled it.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. He carried it. In his hand.”

“Did he carry it back again?”

“Here to the house? No.”

“How do you know he didn't?”

“I was waiting for him in the hall.”

“And you noticed: no newspaper. No rolled newspaper, you said to yourself.”

“Purely incidentally, yes.”

“Incidentally nothing, Mary. You had it in your mind to look. You knew he'd gone out with it and you spotted at once he'd come back without it. That's not incidental. That's spying on him.”

“Please yourself.”

He was angry. “It's you who's going to have to do the pleasing, Mary,” he said, loud and slow. “You're going to have to please Brother Nigel in about five minutes from now. They're in spasm, Mary. They can see the ground opening up at their feet again and they do not know what to do. They literally do not know what to do.” His anger passed. Jack could do that. “And later—as soon as you had a chance—you incidentally searched his pockets. And it wasn't there.”

“I didn't
look
for it, I simply noticed it was missing. And yes, it wasn't there.”

“Does he often go out with old newspapers?”

“When he needs to keep abreast—for his work—he's a conscientious officer—he takes a newspaper with him.”