The Long Room (7 page)

‘Basement?’ one of his companions asks.

This cannot mean they’re holding the case conference already, Stephen thinks, with a surge of panic. Louise had said that one was threatened but surely Rollo would have told him? Besides, listeners are not usually invited to take part. Could Rollo be springing a trap for him? Stephen has never had to argue a case with one of the sub-directors: when an investigation demands that level of attention, the group controller will usually represent the relevant listener. But perhaps
PHOENIX
is different? Louise knows nothing but its barest bones; she is not on the special list.

Although it is only a matter of seconds before the lift and its
passengers reach the basement, Stephen’s fear is rising fast. He cannot be locked into the Cube with Buckingham and these three men; he cannot make a coherent case for a continuing investigation, but he must. It is impossible to stop it now. He has had other cases which were brought to an early end when the operatives or strategists decided they were not productive, or when new information intervened. He has had to get accustomed to not knowing how a story ends. His caseload is like a ramshackle library, or the shelf of books that one might find in a lodging house or small seaside hotel. An entirely random collection: some books that come in a uniform edition, all the volumes lined up and complete, others torn and tattered, with unexpected gaps and pages missing. But this story, Helen’s story, this is different. This is a story in which he himself belongs. He’s not just a reader, he’s a part of it; she means much more to him than anybody else he listens to and he cannot lose her now.

He only breathes again when they reach the basement and the sub-director and his myrmidons veer off toward the garage. Stephen, waved through by the security guard, finds Binks. Today she has on a short black skirt and a purple jumper. She gives no sign of recognising Stephen. When Rollo arrives he pats her on her bottom.

‘Now look here,’ Rollo says, without preamble, as soon as he and Stephen are locked in. ‘Frankly, I’m getting a bit worried. Things aren’t quite adding up. We’ve been running this for two months now and I’d like to hear what you think is actually going on.’

‘Yes, but the thing is, as I keep telling you, I am shut out of half the case. I can tell you everything that you might want to
know about the man – what it sounds like when he shits, what he eats, what time he goes to bed, how much he cares about the Test Match, but not what he does every hour of the working day. If you’d let me …’

‘That’s just not possible. I have made that clear before. Where we are is where we are. We have to do what we can with what we’ve got. So, what
have
we got, in your opinion?’

‘Not a lot, I must admit. And if we’d been having this talk last week, I think I would have had to say: nothing at all. But things do look a bit different now. Although as yet as clear as mud. You know, there was that odd thing on Sunday evening? Did you get anything from your trackers after that?’

‘No. You know there were no trackers on him during the weekend. And since then there’s been some massive drama in Department Four which has hogged all available resources.’

‘Yes, I know all about it. But it’s a shame. Because that means there are still two hours unexplained.’

‘What happened on Monday? Did the wife say anything?’

‘No, well, she was evidently upset. I can’t tell you what went on between them when he got back so late on Sunday night; she was in the bedroom.’

‘Which is of course completely out of range?’

‘Yes. But, judging from her tone on Monday morning, she was agitated. I guess he refused to tell her where he’d been. She may suspect he’s having an affair. Could he be? Would that account for where he was that evening?’

‘I suppose. But have you any evidence of that?’

‘Basically, there’s no real evidence of anything. Except, on Monday, when he got home, he tried to make amends. He must have been feeling guilty. He bought flowers.’

‘Was she pleased?’

‘Not really. I’d say that his doing something so out of character – I mean buying her a bunch of roses – merely deepened her suspicions. But she’s a very nice woman. Well, she seems nice. She accepted the flowers with good grace and didn’t say anything else about the night before and nor did he. They went out to dinner. A spur-of-the-moment plan. You didn’t give me time to finish that tape so I can’t say what happened when they got back. Probably, if it was late, they just went straight to bed. And, as I say …’

‘The bedroom.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Is there a telephone in there?’

‘Yes. Beside the bed.’

‘It’s not really on, you know, bugging a chap’s bedroom.’

‘Well no, of course, it’s not. But …’

All through this exchange Stephen has kept his eyes squarely fixed on Rollo’s. Now he notes the look of speculation in them. But Rollo soon dismisses the thought.

‘I doubt I’d get authorisation. It would need an extra clearance. Let’s just get on with what we’ve got, at least for the time being. The question is: do you think that
PHOENIX
is up to something?’

‘Yes. I do. But I don’t yet know what that something is. I just have an instinct that he’s not playing straight. There’s something slippery, evasive; if I were his wife I would not be sure that I could trust him. I mean, she does come across as quite a trusting person, but I’m getting the feeling that things are not going well for them; there’s a bit of distance, they don’t really seem to talk.’

‘That sounds about par for a married couple. Not that I would know.’

‘Nor me. But my sense is that he is holding something back.’

‘You mean, there’s something he is keeping to himself?’

‘That’s exactly it.’

‘And what do you think that something is?’

‘Well, there you’ve got me. I can’t tell. You know, it would really help if you could give me some idea of what it is you think he’s doing. Whom he may be contacting, at least.’

‘I can’t do that, I’m sorry. But I can say that my other avenues of investigation are not really producing anything very useful either. My sub-director is gunning for a full case conference. He is concerned that by keeping our sights trained on
PHOENIX
we might be missing something else.’

‘Do you want my advice, for what it’s worth? I mean, you’re the operative but one does develop a sort of sixth sense as a listener. And my sense is that he’s getting quite wound up. He’s jittery; he can’t sit still. Sooner or later he’ll get careless. And then, if there’s anything, I’ll know.’

‘Good man,’ says Rollo. ‘I think that does make sense. I think I’ll try for that extension. As they were always drumming into us on the Advanced Training Course, one should listen to the listener! Let’s ring the bell for Binks to get us out.’

After Rollo has thanked Binks and said goodbye, he and Stephen stroll to the lift together. Waiting for it in the basement lobby with him, Stephen offhandedly, as if reminded for some reason of something unimportant, says, ‘Oh by the way, do you have a photograph? I’ve been meaning to ask.’

‘Of
PHOENIX
?’

‘No, of his wife. Of Helen.’

Helen. It is the first time that Stephen has said her name out loud to another person. Rollo looks at him if he has gone mad.

‘The wife?’ he says. ‘Of course not. Why the hell would you want a picture of the wife?’

That afternoon, that Wednesday, a sudden storm of hail whipping against the windows of the long room, the taste of dust, a scum of cold tea in the bottom of a mug, the hiss of the machines, and Stephen with fear still roiling in him. It had been simmering all day, since his miserable morning and his interview with Rollo. Meanwhile Helen and Jamie have returned from dinner, in even higher spirits than before. Helen has declined a nightcap. There has been some play on words about nightcaps and nightdresses but Stephen did not catch it. There will have been a trace of Helen’s scent still in the air when she went to bed, and Jamie with her. Would she wear the same scent in the morning?

She awoke, then it was Tuesday, yesterday. Stephen was quickly catching up with her: she went to work; she never even noticed Stephen’s absence. While she was at work there was not time to keep watch over her domestic realm, to listen to the birdsong and the rain.
OBERON
, on a whim, decided he would go home to Jamaica, see his children, catch some sun. He booked his flight in person at a travel agent’s; Stephen has had to pay him more attention than he usually does in order to discover when he’s leaving. There’ll be no point keeping his telephone tapped while he is away.
OBERON
has been on the telephone, arguing with the mother of his sons. He wants to bring the elder of them back with him to London; there are good schools here, he tells the woman, but she protests. He
is only nine years old, she pleads; if you take him I’ll be very sad. The possibility that she might come to London too does not seem to have occurred to her or
OBERON
. Maybe there are other children, other men.

VULCAN
’s health is worsening. What a pity he can’t go with
OBERON
to that village near Montego Bay: a couple of weeks of sunshine would do him the world of good. Stephen thinks of
VULCAN
in the raw damp of a Clydeside winter, coughing up his lungs in his unheated tenement flat. Thick strings of phlegm and mucus clagging in his mouth. Please God they are not streaked with blood. What would
VULCAN
make of Caribbean beaches, white sands and turquoise seas? Sea, to
VULCAN
, would be grey and surly, snapping at his feet on a rare day out. He’d enjoy a paddle in warm water, the small waves gently lapping round his old, thin ankle bones. But, of course, he’s never met
OBERON
, has no idea he exists, wouldn’t know him from Adam. The only link between the two of them is Stephen. It’s a pity.

Once
OBERON
’s travel plans have been established, there is work to do for the Group II listeners. Now it transpires that yesterday’s alarm may not have been false, or at least not quite as false as everybody hoped. But the crucial source of information has gone missing. Department Four’s operatives and go-betweens are still rushing in and out of Group II’s room wearing worried faces; Stephen has been given three more tapes to scan. Yet again he is trying to keep his head above the flood of directions, instructions, requests and messages that swirl through that taxi firm in a town beside the border. There is a moment when he thinks he may have heard something significant. A man’s voice, calling in, a voice rough with the unsaid, asks if the boss of the firm is in. The woman who fields
the calls says he is not and can she take a message? The male caller hesitates. ‘Just tell him I have the woodwork done.’

Harriet, asked by Stephen to listen to the call, does not know this particular subject of interest and cannot comment, except to say that it would be sensible to share it with Martin in Group II. Martin is much too busy to drop everything and come round to Stephen’s desk. Stephen will have to wait until Martin has finished the report that he is writing now, or go to all the bother of flagging up the tape before removing it and taking it round himself. Strictly speaking, he can’t do this in any case, as no tape is ever to be transferred from hand to hand without being checked and registered by Muriel. From time to time Security carries out spot-checks of Muriel’s register to see that the rules are being kept. They arrive in pairs: one to look at the register, the other to tally what it says with the tapes that are at the specified desk. They perform other inspections too, at intervals and unannounced. There are penalties for anyone caught in breach of the rules, and some of them are harsh. You can be fined, you can be demoted, you can even be dismissed. Blinds must be drawn in every office that could possibly be overlooked, if only by someone with a telescope, before a single light goes on. Pockets, bags and briefcases can be searched at random as staff are leaving the building. Every cabinet door and every drawer in every desk is checked each night to make sure that all of them are either empty of material or correctly locked. Stephen, working late, has heard the steady tread of the inspectors making their slow rounds, opening office doors and closing them behind them, rattling the metal drawers, the keys they carry with them jangling like a convict’s chains.

Martin eventually appears, has a quick listen and recalls that
the owner of the taxi firm has commissioned a crib from a local joiner. The unidentified and hesitant voice must belong to him. A crib? Yes, a doll’s crib, Martin thinks; it’s a present for his little girl at Christmas. A surprise. That would account for why the caller was reluctant to give details.

All afternoon, then, sped away, and it is not until he gets to the second of Tuesday’s tapes that Stephen remembers Helen is going to a play. She comes home simply to put her school books down and change her clothes; she does not lay a finger on the piano or sing a single note. There’ll be another night without her: after the theatre she is going on to dinner, she’s going to get home late. It’s desolating, another night alone.

Coralie was sitting at the table in her unused dining room and picking through the box of Christmas decorations that her son had fetched for her last Sunday from the loft. She had made an appointment with herself to do that this Wednesday afternoon. Every Sunday evening, after she has waved good-bye to Stephen, she lists the things that she must do during the coming week. There are things on the list she would not forget to do even if they were not written down, but she likes to write them in any case: they lengthen the list and make it look more purposeful. The house can seem quite empty of a Sunday evening. Coralie says each entry aloud as she makes it: