Noose (19 page)

‘We like to build from available information a personality profile of those we're going to talk to,' Underhill said. ‘A completeness, in so far as that's possible.'

‘Did someone do it to
you
?' Ian said.

‘What?' Underhill said.

‘Concoct a version of your personality before they offered you a job,' Ian said.

‘It's routine in our sort of activity,' Underhill said. ‘One doesn't resent it. Indeed, one recognizes it's for the best; there will be a matching of work with the operative's character. “Character” here to mean inner resources, flairs, aims, ambitions.'

‘Which one doesn't resent it? I do,' Ian replied.

‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in standard-issue thinking, Ian,' Fisher said. ‘I'm referring to your illness when you were four years old.'

‘How did you get on to that?' Ian said.

‘Yes, we got on to it, to use your phrase,' Fisher said, with a comradely smile. ‘This is part of what we mean by a “dedicated scan”, you see. One can't know what might be turned up.'

‘Diphtheria,' Ian said.

‘You were whisked off to the sanatorium,' Fisher said. ‘An emergency ambulance job, you torn away from your parents.'

‘The sana, as it was known,' Ian said.

‘An isolation hospital,' Underhill said.

‘Luckily, its medical records are still archived and available in some circumstances,' Fisher said.

‘Which circumstances? I thought medical records were private, even a child's,' Ian said.

‘Well, yes, in a sense,' Underhill said. ‘Definitely.'

‘Which sense?' Ian said.

‘We
make
the circumstances. Fortunately, we were able to get sight of them,' Fisher replied.

‘But how?' Ian said.

‘That's the way things go sometimes, isn't it, given a degree of know-how in procedural matters?' Fisher said. ‘We discovered that every patient in the sanatorium had a number, and twice a week in the
South Wales Echo –
previously the
News –
a bulletin gave the state of all patients, but, for confidentiality, using these numbers, not their names. This appeared as a grid under one of two headings: “Condition Unchanged” and “Progressing Satisfactorily”. Given the fatality record of diphtheria then, “Condition Unchanged” looked funereal.'

‘There was a blackboard over each bed with the number chalked on it,' Ian said.

‘You were two-one-three,' Underhill said. ‘They kept you in the sanatorium for six months, so you must have got very used to those figures.'

‘Yes,' Ian said.

‘It would have taken over your name,' Fisher said.

‘In a way, yes,' Ian said.

‘This must have been nearly impossible for a child of four to comprehend,' Fisher said. ‘An identity, as it were, lost. Older patients might realize their name had been put aside temporarily for admin reasons as much as anything. Normality would return once they were discharged. But a child of four might think he'd permanently ceased to exist as he had been previously. Not death, but a total morph.'

Underhill said: ‘I spoke of building a personality. Sometimes we have to
re
build.'

‘That was ages ago. My personality has been OK lately,' Ian said. ‘I've got an RAF number, but it's not me, it's a number.'

‘There are memoirs by prisoners in German concentration camps or Russian gulags who became reduced in their own minds to an institutional number, as might have happened to you – almost certainly did happen to you – in the hospital,' Fisher said.

‘And then, of course, the Charles Dickens novel
A Tale of Two Cities
shows this sad mental state in a character called Dr Manette,' Underhill said. ‘Freed from the Bastille prison in the revolution of 1789 for a while he can think of himself only as his cell label, “One-Oh-Five North Tower”. He slips back to that identity if suddenly stressed even long after release, and restarts the job he had there mending shoes. Perhaps you felt something like that.'

‘I've never mended shoes,' Ian said. ‘I hated the way cobblers kept the nails in their mouth. A bit of an indigestion twitch and they'd swallow the lot.'

‘Of course, we called at the public library and looked through bound copies of the
Echo
covering your “sana” months checking for mentions of two-one-three,' Fisher said. ‘We had a real thrill when, between Tuesday's and Friday's editions of the
Echo
one week you moved from “Condition Unchanged” to “Progressing Satisfactorily”. It seemed to say more to us than your health had improved. We felt we could reach out to you now, and you to us.'

‘Look, what's all this jabber about, then?' Ian said. ‘Why so much digging? Who told you I had diphtheria?'

‘It must have come to be almost second nature for you to drop your name and the identity that went with it and become this number two-one-three instead,' Underhill said. ‘The self you'd been born with and brought up with for your first four years could be discarded, and this new, sort of anonymous, featureless, individual took over. You'd become a chalk mark on a board.'

‘That is a very useful asset in the kind of work we're here to discuss with you,' Fisher said. ‘The uniforms, and the band, and the
gloire
and the Sword are all very, very fine. Who'd deny it? But they are not, decidedly not, everything. Our impression is that even though you took the Sword of Honour you knew this.'

‘Of course I fucking know life is not one noisy parade,' Ian said.

The three of them were seated around a small conference table near the window in Ian's office. He had taken the chair he usually occupied for meetings at the table's head. Anyone looking in would have assumed he was running things. It didn't feel like that to him. More like things were running away from him.

Underhill had made an occasional note in a small pad she carried. Now, she read some words from it. ‘You mentioned our possible interest in “selected National Service people near the end of their time.” I think we can plead guilty to that. But I'd like you to notice above all the word “selected”. And Charles referred to it, didn't he? You'll probably have gathered from what we've said so far that selection is not at all a pushover. We know what we are looking for and those who haven't got it will be excluded. In fact, it's very unlikely we'd even approach them.'

‘For instance, we've recently brought aboard a one-time colleague of yours, Raymond Bain,' Fisher said. ‘Now, as you'll know, in some respects he might not seem suited to the kind of career we've been discussing.'

‘You mean the wheelchair?' Ian said.

‘He has certain very palpable limitations,' Fisher said. ‘There's no getting away from that.'

‘Some try,' Ian said.

‘But he has, too, the kind of character and mind and background that we seek,' Fisher replied. ‘This is someone with a very worthwhile medal, not all that far down from a Victoria Cross. Reports on him showed he has intelligent aggression and considerable inventiveness. Well, you'll remember the airfield broadcast, I'm sure. This was in some senses
outré
and maverick, not in the properly play-fair mode favoured by the British officer class – at least until their backs are to the wall. But nuts to that. The ploy had propulsion. It had zing. Possibly it lost him the Sword. You'd know more about that than we do. But nuts to the Sword, too, if I may say so in the presence of one of its holders. We are folk – Lorna-Jane, myself, our workmates – who respect, who crave originality. Bain, in our view, exudes it. His family looks fairly ordinary at first sight but on the father's side had a distinguished man of letters who became a notable professor of Deccan College in the University of Poona, India, and wrote on Aristotle.'

‘This should be a help,' Ian said.

‘Ray Bain is very happy in his present post,' Underhill said.

‘Emily Stanton told you to give him a job, did she?' Ian said. ‘She has that kind of power? What is she exactly? Where in the heaven and earth scheme of things? She's always trying to compensate for mistakes she's made. She thinks she helped get Ray's legs blown off. Perhaps it should have been mine. But she was compensating to me, as well, in place of my father.'

‘This is another aspect of chance,' Underhill said.

‘Look, Emily's got some big position in one of the secret service outfits, has she?' Ian said. ‘Is she your boss, then? My dad told her about the diphtheria and so on, did he?'

‘People think of our kind of work as gumshoeing enemies, breaking and entering in a search for evidence, occasional rough-house encounters with spies and/or traitors,' Underhill replied. ‘And, of course, there
is
some of that kind of thing. But we have a place for planners, too, for desk men and women, for gifted folk who will interpret and set in a context what those officers out in the field produce. We're convinced Ray will execute that kind of sedentary function very, very well.'

‘You could say he's made for it, or
re
made,' Ian said.

‘It's often the case in nature, isn't it, that where a living being loses part of itself, that loss is made up for by an increase in some other part of the body or faculties,' Fisher said. ‘We cut back a rose, for example, to make it flower in due course even more strongly than before, because it feels its existence is threatened and it must defend itself by a sort of attack. Ray Bain will be like that, I know.'

‘Because his legs were pruned?' Ian said.

‘He will concentrate on the possible, and by that special concentration make up for certain other lacks,' Underhill said.

‘Did Emily have me moved here, to acclimatize myself to secrecy?' Ian said. ‘And to get the mention on my CV? It doesn't matter too much, I suppose, that I'm not at Norton long. What counts is the mention. It helps with the profile.'

‘The profile
is
important, for reasons that have been mentioned,' Fisher said. ‘We prefer a more comprehensive term than “profile” though, such as “portrait” or “life narrative”.'

‘The Bain family has its creditable past in the nineteenth century, while you, Ian, are from a family that excelled itself more recently through the gallantry of your dad,' Underhill said. ‘This sort of thing is an impressive factor. Couldn't be more so.'

‘I understand from Emily that my father was having it off with her for a while,' Ian replied. ‘My mother might at least suspect. It would thrill Dad to know a paramour could have been dead but for him.'

‘We don't expect you to give us an acceptance of the job offer now,' Underhill replied, ‘but that's what this is, an unconditional offer. You have those fifty-plus days to go and then a month's paid resettlement leave. Charles will let you have a card. It's as if for an accountancy firm in the City. There's a number to ring. Ask for the Receivership Department. The Receivership Department. Charles or I will be there, most probably. If not, it's quite likely you'll go through to Ray Bain. In that case, you'll discover for yourself how content he is, and how suited. We'll let him know he might be talking to you soon. Say within the next couple of weeks?'

I
an Charteris didn't ring the Receivership Department of the nominated Coldstream, Fay and Partners accountancy firm in the City, but he did take a telephone call at home from Ray Bain. Ray wanted a meeting, urgently.

This would be getting on for three years later, though. By then, Ian was out of the Air Force, into freelance Fleet Street journalism, living in London, and married to Lucy, with a child due soon. There had been no echoes of that long-ago brush-off letter. The Adjutant, Training, had been half right: women could be changeable, but also not.

‘Ian!' Bain said. ‘Grand to hear your voice. Actually, I was expecting to hear it quite a while ago. Lorna-Jane said you'd be in touch. I gather she and Fisher visited when you were at Norton, back end of 'fifty-three. We were disappointed here in the office. They'd been very much impressed.'

‘By …?'

‘You. And all that barbed wire. Lorna-Jane gets the hots from bright, unrusted, triple-furl barbed wire.'

‘Grand to hear you, too, Ray.'

‘I understood they made you one of their propositions.'

‘Well, yes.'

‘They're not ten a penny, you know.'

‘I did think about it.'

‘But?'

‘Not my sort of thing.'

‘How could you be sure?
They
believed it was. They're personnel experts. They don't often pick wrong 'uns. Time justifies them.'

‘I reckon they'd decided before we ever met. Or they'd been told to decide it – told from above.'

‘That's a possible, I'll admit.'

‘I got the impression they were run by—'

‘Absolutely.'

‘I didn't like it. I felt I was being dragooned. Lucy did, too. Choices removed.'

‘
I
was dragooned,' Bain replied. ‘Benign dragooned.'

‘But you like the job, don't you? They told me you were very happy.'

‘I had
limited
choices, didn't I? Factors that don't apply in your case. Two of them. The Regiment said goodbye, naturally, and they arranged a bit of a disability pension. Then, I was glad to get welcomed into another career, with the backing of someone at the top. That could have been the same for you.'

‘They said not to call it a career. More like a vocation. I was set on the journalism, though, Ray. I wanted something a bit more frivolous. And some fame. I must have got that taste from my father. What you definitely can't have in your kind of work is fame. A bullet comes with fame.'