The Chinese Assassin (54 page)

Thick dust clogged
his
throat
and
eyes as he bent to pick her up
and
he began coughing
and
retching as he staggered across the chamber towards the
door. Outside
in
the
tunnel there
was
no
light
at all. The dust
was
thicker there
and
he
scrambled blindly
on, over piles of rubble
and f
al
len blocks
of
concrete that
he could only
feel in the total dark
n
ess. By instinct
he
was making
for the upward slope,
carrying
the now
unconscious
Chinese woman in
his
arms. As he went the crack
and
roar of the tunnel works splitting open
around him in
the pitch
blackness
added
their awful
clamour to the deeper rumble of
the
moving earth.

31

The antiquated lift cage groaned and creaked as
its worn, nineteenth-century pulley-system
cranked
it ponderously up to the fourth floor. The bulb on the landing
was still
not lit and
Moyna
h
an
hung back in the shadows, peering
expectantly
between the
lattice-work
of the
spring-loaded
gates as the
head
and shoulders
of the man
inside
rose slowly into view. His face
was
hidden by an
open
copy of the
Evening Standard
he was
reading and
in the dim glow of the
lift’s interior light Moy
nah
an
watched the
massive,
two-word
headline stretched across
the
front page in heavy black type shifting steadily
up towards his
eye-level.

The greased bicycle-style
chain rattled noisily
in its
pipe
and the
light inside went our abruptly
as
the lift stopped
and
the gates
opened.
A
muffled
curse accompanied the crash of the gates
slamming
shut again in
the darkness and Moynahan darted
forward
and bent down
to free the trapped
trouser
leg.

‘All right,
all right Moyna
h
an! I can manage,
thank
you.’

‘Sorry sir.’ Moyna
h
an’s voice was crisply
respectful and
he
stood
up
quickly when
he saw his help wasn’t
needed. ‘Surprised r see
you here,
sir.’

‘I’d
like
to have a look in the flat for
myself Moyna
ha
n.’

‘Right sir, of
course.’
He
pulled
outhit key
and inserted it
in
the
lock. ‘I thought
for a
moment, sir,’ he said
over his
shoulder,
‘it
was Mr. Scholefield himself coming back.’ He swung the door open and reached inside to switch
on
the light.

Percy Crowdleigh stepped past the Irishman into the lighted
hall
without answering and stood staring irritably down for a moment at the torn cuff of his dark striped trousers. He made
a
loud clicking noise with his tongue for several seconds then slowly folded the paper he was holding and laid
it on
the
hall
table. He waited until Moynahan had followed him inside and closed the door before speaking.

‘He’s dead.’

‘I know, sir.
I heard it on
the
news.’ Moynahan
grinned suddenly and
nodded down at
the
big
headline
on the evening paper.
‘Still,
he had a good run. Eighty-two’s not a bad age for a guerrilla
revolutionary, is
it?’

‘
I’
m
not
talking about Mao Tse-tung!’ Crowdleigh’s
voice
was
still testy. ‘Your assignment
here is
finished.’
He waved a
hand vaguely
towards the paper. ‘Page
seven,
two paragraphs from Singapore, refers.’

Moynahan
picked up the paper and opened
it.
He read the brief agency
item
at the
bottom
of the foreign news page under its
Singapore dateline, then
looked up at Crowdleigh questioningly. ‘September the eighth?
Yesterday—a
n
d
nobody in the whole world of
journalism wondering why a
British
sinologist should be the victim of a hit-and-run
accident
in the Singapore
bar
district at three
o’clock
in the morning.’ Moynahan’s accent
had
suddenly become
less
pronounced. He stared at the Cabinet Office man a moment longer.

‘The post mortem showed his
lungs
were clogged
with dust,’ said
Crowdleigh dryly. He considered Moynahan with a. bored expression on his f
a
ce. ‘Some
time
we
may assign
you, Moynahan, to break into the crystal
casket in which
they will no doubt
enshrine
the Chairman’s remains, and bring back samples of the contents of his
lungs
too.’

Moynahan gazed back at his
superior
uncomprehendingly. Then he
laughed uncertainly
at what he
assumed was
another of his
over-elaborate jests.
‘For myself I
can’t say
I’m sorry to be moving on to
something
else, sir. The last six or
seven
weeks since Scholef
iel
d
left
have been as quiet as the bloody grave here, sir, if you’ll
pardon the—’ Crowdleigh interrupted him with a peremptory gesture.

Did
you get his papers?’

‘Yes sir.’ Moyn
aha
n reached inside
the black
jacket of his porter’s unif
o
rm and pulled out a long buff envelope. ‘His bank
manager
was very reluctant. Refused point blank even to consider opening
the
strong box just
on the
strength of a Special Branch card. We wouldn’t have them now if I hadn’t told
him
to ring you—and he
wants
them back
by
quarter to
three.’

Crowdleigh took the papers from him and walked
int
o
the
study.
He paused in the
middle
of the room for a moment,
looking round. The
half
empty vodka bottle and two unwashed glasses still stood
on the
desk.
He walked over to the Chinese scroll on th
e
wall
and raised
his spectacles
to
his forehead
to
peer
closely
at the double
signature
at the foot of the
i
nscription.
He
drummed his
fi
n
gers
absently
on the
envelope
hi
his hands as
he
leaned closer.
‘Take a couple of
shots
of this, please,’ he
said quietly
over
h
is
shoulder
then went quickly across to the desk.

While
Moy
nahan
was photographing the signatures with
the
miniature camera
he had taken from his
pocket,
Crowdleigh
prised
open the
envelope
and shook the
papers inside onto the blotter. He
pushed
his spectacles up onto his forehead
again and peered
at the photostat of
the poem in Chinese
calligraphy.
Behind blur
the
clicking ceased and Moynahan
put the
camera
back in his
pocket and stood waiting beside the desk. ‘Was
anything found on
the body that
would give a
due as to
what
happened?’

Crowdleigh
continued gazing
at the convoluted
Chinese characters
for a
long time
before he
looked
up. Then he stared
absently
at Mo
ynaha
n
as
though
lie
had forgotten who he was. ‘There
was
a
notebook in
his pocket
with
a lot of detailed notes
in
it,
yes, and a few
other
papers.
We’re
doing our
best
to check them out’ He reached
up
to
h
is forehead and
readjusted
the
spectacles on the bridge of his bony nose.
‘Do a couple of pictures of all the papers in that envelope, then get ‘em back
to
the bank fast’

He wandered
off idly
across the room,
picking
up the jade mandarin
figure
from beside the
vodka bottle.
He carried it
across to the window and held
it towards the
light.
He stood for a long while gazing absently out into the
street,
stroking the pale
green stone.
‘We’re beginning
to
get a
picture, piece
by piece.’

And if only the damned Americans didn’t
tr
y to do everything
on
their own....
He spoke
quietly to h
imself
without
looking
up from the
jade figure, as if
the room
was e
mpty
.

Moynahan
looked
up from what he was doing, but Crowd
leigh did
not complete
the
sentence
. W
h
en
he
had finished his
photography, Moynahan returned the
doc
uments
to the
envelope
and re-sealed it with
some gum from a
bottle
in the desk. He held
it
up for Crowdleigh’s inspection
and the Cabinet
Office man
nodded quickly and led
the way
out into the ball.
He
waited while Moynihan opened
the
door for him.
He almost
out of the
door
when he
leaned back and picked
up
the
evening paper from the
hall
table
He
looked
at the
picture
of
Mao
Tse-tung and
the headline for a moment,
then
raised
his eyebrows
at
Moyna
h
an as
though
i
n
silent self-congratulation
that they
had
not been care
less enough to leave it behind. He tucked it
away
i
n
a pocket of
black jacket,
drew
back
the heavy metal
gates
of the lift
and disappeared
inside, without
any parting
salutation

Moynahan stood listening to the m
oan
of the lift as it
sank slowly
down towards the
ground
floor. Then he turned back
and switched
out the light
inside
the ha
l
l
o
f
Scholefield’s flat. He
locked
the door carefully behind him, leaned against It
once
to
make
sure,
then walked of
f
into the
darkness
of the ha
l
l
and
down the stairs.