Farthing (37 page)

“What about old Lady Thirkie, sir?” Carmichael asked.

Penn-Barkis frowned at him. “That really isn’t your business. However, if she’s prepared to keep quiet about what she imagines she knows, Izzard will very likely foil a Jewish-terrorist plot to blow her little castle up tonight.”

“Thank you for telling me, sir,” Carmichael said. He didn’t know whether he hoped she would keep quiet as he had when faced with the same choice, or whether she would hold on to her integrity and be blown sky high. He remembered the way she had wept for her son, and expected the latter. He thought of warning her, but he could not. He had given her Izzard. Now she was his first betrayal. How long before they sent him off to blow up brave old ladies?

Penn-Barkis looked at his watch. “My goodness, it’s almost six o’clock. Do you have dinner plans, Carmichael?”

“Yes, sir,” Carmichael lied once more. The thought of eating with the Chief, of breaking bread
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with him over their devil’s bargain made him feel sick.

“Well I mustn’t keep you from them then,” Penn-Barkis said. He stood up and put out his hand.

Carmichael shook it, automatically, by reflex, not even thinking what he had done until it was over. Then he went down in the elevator, went to the bathroom, and stood there shaking. He did not actually throw up. He drank a little water.

Nobody would kill him. Killing him would raise questions and coercing him was so much easier.

Killing him made him a corpse beyond questioning; coercing him gave them a tool, a useful tool to their hand. He remembered a few years ago talking to colleagues in the Milice and the Gestapo over a case of an international smuggling gang, and finding them nice chaps. He had wondered how they could live with themselves and do some of the things they were expected to do. Now he knew. Lady Thirkie. Agnes

Timms. He dashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. Same old Carmichael, same nice bland English face, no outward changes.

He walked out of the Yard. Stebbings was talking on one of his black telephones. He gave him a nod and a wave as he went by.

Carmichael wanted to go home; he wanted terribly to go home and see Jack, and close the door and shut the world away and find, within his own small space, what security and comfort he could. But there was something he needed to do first.

He walked, leaving the car on the meter. Let the police move it and see it was one of their own.

Let

Scotland Yard and the Mets argue over it. Now the case was over it wasn’t assigned to him any longer.

He could still have used it; he didn’t want to.

Walking relieved some of his energy. Up Southampton Row, past Russell Square, and Tavistock Square, up through Bloomsbury, passing shops pulling down their shutters for the night, and streetwalkers just beginning their working hours. Several of them solicited him. He looked at their overpainted faces and tightly pulled shirts in revulsion. Even for those who were attracted to women, what a parody of femininity they were. Some of them were very young, and he knew that almost none of them had a choice about their profession. He pitied them, even when they abused him for ignoring them. He passed houses that had once been grand and were now almost abandoned to many tenants or none. The rich had moved on to other parts of London, or to the country, like crabs that leave their shells behind to be inhabited by other fish. A light rain began to fall as he reached King’s Cross station; he turned up his collar against it. It should have been dark, he thought, or it should have been raining the way it had been the night he and Royston had gone to Bethnal Green.

A church clock struck seven as he came into Camden Town. There was a rhyme about the church bells of London, but he didn’t think Camden Town came into it, unless St. Martins might be there. He thought it was more probably the inappropriately named St. Martins in the Fields down by Fleet Street. After all these years in London, he still didn’t really know it. He made his way through the side streets where children were chalking on the pavement and chasing after each other. He thought about Lancashire where he and his brother had played on the moor, damming streams and intimidating sheep. London wasn’t good for children. But Lancashire wouldn’t be any safer, nowhere would, safety was now in compromise, doing what he was told, making sure he was on the right side not of the law, or of justice, but of expediency.

He knocked on the door. It was a small door, belonging to a small house that belonged to a landlord.

Who knew what pressures had been put on Royston, economic and otherwise. It was Elvira who opened the door, as usual. “Who’s there?” he heard Royston calling from inside.

“Hello, Elvira,” he said.

“Hello, Uncle Carmichael,” she said, then called, “It’s Uncle Carmichael!”

Royston came to the door and stood behind the child. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Carmichael ignored him. “It’s you I’ve come to see,” he said to Elvira. “The case is over.”

“So you’re going to give me a present?” she asked, wriggling with excitement.

“The Chief asked me directly,” Royston went on.

“If I hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t have had anything to tell them,” Carmichael said, without looking up at him. He fished in his pocket. “Here, Elvira, do you know what this is?” He tossed it to her. The coin flashed as it caught the light, first the King’s head and then the perky robin, as she caught it.

She examined it for a moment. “It’s a farthing,” she said, in deep disappointment. It was the shiny new farthing he had picked up from beside Brown’s body.

“Do you know what it’s worth?” Carmichael asked.

“Four-farthings-make-a-penny,” she recited, in the singsong tone of a nursery rhyme. “A quarter of a penny.”

“And what can you buy for a farthing?” Carmichael asked.

“I really didn’t mean to—” Royston said.

“Not very much,” Elvira said.

“Whatever you meant, you heard what Agnes Timms said, sergeant,” Carmichael said, over her head to

Royston. “You knew Kahn was innocent as well as I did.”

“What did you find out today?” Royston asked.

Carmichael looked at him for the first time, and saw only the same honest Sergeant Royston he had always known. He sighed. “I found out that Kahn did it, whatever the evidence looks like and however much of it I had. I found out that I’m the kind of person who can compromise and keep on going. And last, but definitely not least, I found out that a farthing doesn’t buy very much.”

“Sir—” Royston protested.

“Here, Elvira,” he said, and slipped her a pound note. “You’ll find that buys a little more. Good night, sergeant.”

Carmichael waved once to the child and walked away up the dirty London street.