The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (43 page)

I trotted in to see Kerr next morning. He was one of several Section heads, but his Section was the only one to make a financial profit because, among other things, it ran the legitimate side of McCulloch and Ross, the bit the public knew about. It made a good profit, too, and so it ought; if it made a loss with all the professional expertise of the other sections behind it then Kerr ought to have been fired. Under Kerr also came several other miscellaneous bits and pieces including the couriers - the messenger-boys.

He seemed somewhat at a loss as to how to deal with me. ‘Ah, yes - Jaggard. I think I have something here for you.’ He handed me a large, thick envelope, heavily sealed. ‘I’m told you know where to deliver that. It appears that…er…delivery may take some time, so you may be absent for a period.’

‘That’s so.’

‘I see,’ he said blankly. ‘Will you be needing desk space - an office?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘I’m glad. We’re tight for space.’ He smiled. ‘Glad to have you…er…with us,’ he said uncertainly. I don’t know what Ogilvie had told him but evidently he was baffled by my precise status.

In my car I opened the envelope and found £1000 in used fivers. That was thoughtful of Ogilvie but, after all, I could hardly claim expenses in the normal way on this operation. I put the money in the special locker built under the front passenger seat and drove to the police station in Marlow where I asked for Honnister. He came out front to meet me. ‘You haven’t been around for a while,’ he said, almost accusingly. ‘I’ve been trying to get you.’

‘I’ve been in the States for a few weeks. What did you want me for?’

‘Oh, just a chat,’ he said vaguely. ‘You must have been away when Ashton and Benson were killed in Sweden.’

‘Yes, but I was told of it.’

‘Funny thing, Ashton going away like that.’ There was a glint in his eye. ‘And then getting messily killed. Makes a man wonder.’

I took out a packet of cigarettes and offered it. ‘Wonder what?’

‘Well, a man like Ashton makes his pile by working hard and then, when he’s still not too old to enjoy it, he suddenly gets dead.’ He looked at the packet in my hand. ‘No, I don’t like American coffin nails. They take good Virginia tobacco, mix it with Turkish, then roast it and toast it and ultraviolet-ray it until it tastes like nothing on God’s earth.’

I shrugged. ‘Everybody dies. And you can’t take it with you, although they tell me Howard Hughes tried.’

‘Seen Penelope Ashton?’

‘Not yet.’ I lit a cigarette although I didn’t like them, either. ‘I’ll be going to the house. I hear she’s expected back today. If she’s not there I’ll see Gillian anyway.’

‘And she’ll see you,’ said Honnister. ‘But only barely. I had a talk with Crammond. He tells me Mayberry hasn’t
been brought to trial, and it’s not likely that he will. He’s unfit to plead.’

‘Yes, I know about that.’

Honnister eyed the desk sergeant and then pushed himself upright from the counter. ‘Let’s have a noggin,’ he proposed. I agreed quickly because it meant he wanted to talk confidentially and I was short of information. On the way to the pub he said, ‘You didn’t come to chat for old times’ sake. What are you after?’

I said, ‘When we started investigating we concentrated on Ashton and didn’t look too closely at Benson, although at one point it did cross my mind that he might have chucked the acid.’

‘Not the act of an old family servant.’

Neither was drilling his master full of holes - but I didn’t say that aloud. ‘Did you check on him?’

We turned into the Coach and Horses. ‘A bit; enough to put him in the clear.’ Honnister addressed the landlord. ‘Hi, Monte; a large scotch and a pint of Director’s.’

‘My shout,’ I said.

‘It’s okay - I’m on an expense account.’

I smiled. ‘So am I.’ I paid for the drinks and we took them to a table. It happened to be the same table at which I’d proposed marriage to Penny; it seemed a lifetime ago. It was early, just before midday, and the pub was quiet. I said, ‘I’ve developed an interest in Benson.’

Honnister sank his nose into his beer. When he came up for air he said, ‘There’s been something funny going on in the Ashton family. This will have to be tit-for-tat, you know.’

‘I’ll tell you as much as I’m allowed to.’

He grunted. ‘A fat lot of good that’ll do me.’ He held up his hand. ‘All right, I know your lips are sealed and all that bull, and that I’m just a bumbling country copper who doesn’t know which end is up - but tell me one thing: was Ashton kidnapped?’

I smiled at Honnister’s description of himself which was a downright lie. ‘No, he went under his own steam. He specifically asked that the police not be involved.’

‘So he thought we might be. That’s interesting in itself. And Benson went with him. What do you want to know about him?’

‘Anything you can tell me that I don’t know already. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel.’

‘Bachelor - never married. Worked for Ashton since the dark ages - butler, valet, handyman, chauffeur - you name it. Age at death, sixty-four, if you can believe
The Times
.’

‘Any family - brothers or sisters?’

‘No family at all.’ Honnister grinned at me. ‘As soon as I saw that bit in
The Times
I got busy. The itch in my bump of curiosity was driving me mad. Benson had a bit of money, about fifteen thousand quid, which he left to Dr Barnardo’s Homes for Boys.’

‘Anything else?’ I asked, feeling depressed.

‘Ever been in a war?’ asked Honnister unexpectedly,

‘No.’

‘Seen any deaths by violence?’

‘A few.’

‘So have I, in my professional capacity. I’ve also seen the results of bombs and shellfire. It was a bit difficult to tell after a pathologist had been at them but I’d say Ashton had been shot in the back twice, and Benson shot through the head from the front. Caught in a shell blast, my arse!’

‘You’ve seen the bodies!’

‘I made it my business to - unofficially, of course. I went to the mortuary here. I told you my bump of curiosity was itching.’

‘Charlie, you keep that under your bloody hat or you’ll find yourself in dead trouble. I really mean that.’

‘I told you before I can keep secrets,’ he said equably. ‘Anyway, Sweden isn’t in my parish, so there’s nothing I
can do about it. If they were killed in Sweden,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘They were killed in Sweden,’ I said. ‘That’s genuine. And they
were
killed in a Swedish battle practice area while manoeuvres were going on.’ I paused. ‘Probably
The Times
got the report wrong.’

‘In a pig’s eye,’ said Honnister pointedly.

I shrugged. ‘Anyone else here seen the bodies?’

‘Not that I know of. The coffins arrived here sealed and complete with death certificates, probably signed by one of your department’s tame doctors. Christ, talk about medical ethics! Anyway, they’re underground now.’

‘Any more about Benson?’

‘Not much. He lived a quiet life. He had a woman in Slough but he gave that up about five years ago.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘It won’t do you any good,’ he said. ‘She died of cancer eighteen months ago. Benson paid for her treatment in a private ward - for old times’ sake, I suppose. Other than that there’s nothing I can tell you. There was nothing much to Benson; he was just a sort of old-maid bachelor with nothing remarkable about him. Except one thing.’

‘What was that?’

‘His face. He’d taken a hell of a beating at one time or other. Nature didn’t make him like that - man did.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I was bloody tired of coming up against dead ends. I thought about it and decided that my best bet would be to look into Benson’s army career but I wasn’t sanguine that anything would come of that.

‘Another drink?’

‘No, thanks, Charlie. I want to see the Ashtons.’

‘Give them my regards,’ he said.

I drove to the Ashton house and, to my surprise, bumped into Michaelis who was just leaving. Under his arm he
carried a loose-leaf ledger about as big as two bibles. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

He grinned. ‘Playing puff-puffs. You know I’m interested and Miss Ashton gave me permission to mess about in the attic pretty nearly any time I like. It really is a fascinating set-up.’

I suppose it wasn’t too weird that a counter-espionage agent should be nuts on model railways. I indicated the big book. ‘What’s that?’

‘Now this is really interesting,’ he said. ‘Let me show you.’ He rested the book on the bonnet of my car. The letters ‘LMS’ were inscribed on the leather-bound cover in gilt. ‘This is a set of timetables for the old LMS - the London, Midland and Scottish railway that was before nationalization. Effectively speaking, the railways were nationalized in 1939 and all the trains were steam in those days.’

He opened the book and I saw column after column of figures. ‘Ashton was duplicating the LMS timetable, but I haven’t figured out which year he was using so I’m taking this home to check against some old Bradshaws I have. Ashton’s system up there in the attic isn’t what you’d call standard practice in the model world - most of us can’t afford what he’d got. I told you about those microprocessors he can program. These figures give the settings needed to the control panel to duplicate parts of the LMS timetable. He’d also got similar books for other pre-war railway companies - the London and North-Eastern, the Great Western and so on. It’s bloody remarkable.’

‘Indeed it is,’ I said. ‘Which Miss Ashton gave you permission?’

‘Gillian. I talked to her a lot in hospital, about her father at the beginning, but one thing led to another. She was lonely, you know, being all bandaged up like that. I used to read books and newspapers for her. Anyway, I talked about
the model railway and she found I was interested so she said I could come and play.’

‘I see.’

‘Gillian’s a very nice girl,’ he said. ‘We get on very well.’ He paused. ‘I don’t spend all my time in the attic’

I studied Michaelis in a new light. It occurred to me that he was unmarried like myself and, if all went well with both of us, I was probably talking to my future brother-in-law. ‘Is Gillian home now?’

‘Yes - and she’s expecting Penny for lunch.’ He slammed the ledger closed. ‘I heard on the grapevine what’s happened to you. I think it’s a bloody disgrace. Who the hell was to know…’

I interrupted. ‘The less said about it the better, even in private. Don’t talk about it at all - ever. That way nothing will slip out accidentally.’ I consulted my watch. ‘If you’re so chummy with Gillian I thought you might be staying for lunch.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t feel like facing Penny so I made an excuse. You see. Penny hasn’t told Gillian about us - the department, I mean. She doesn’t know anything about it and that makes it easier. But I haven’t seen Penny since we came back from Sweden and I haven’t the guts to face her yet - not after what happened. I have a weird feeling she might read my mind.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It is bloody difficult.’

‘You’re more involved than I am,’ he said. ‘How do you feel about it?’

‘Pretty much the same as you, but maybe a bit more so. Well, I’ll go in and see Gillian. See you around.’

‘Yes,’ said Michaelis. ‘I hope so.’

I had forgotten that Gillian was not very pretty to look at and she came as a renewed shock. Her face was puckered and drawn with scar tissue and her right eyelid was pulled almost closed. The first few moments were not at all easy; there was the double embarrassment of condoling on the death of her father and coping with her dreadful appearance, and I hoped my face did not reflect what I felt. But she put me at my ease, gave me a scotch and had a sherry herself.

Of her father she had little to say beyond expressing a puzzled sadness and a total lack of knowledge of his motives. ‘What can I say? There
is
nothing to be said, except that I’m deeply sorry and totally bewildered.’

Of herself she had come to terms with her affliction and was prepared to talk about it. ‘Of course, it will be better after the plastic surgery. I’m told the best man for that is in America, and Penny wants me to go over. But my face is not so nice now, and I don’t go out much.’ She smiled lopsidedly. ‘I saw you talking to Peter Michaelis outside. Do you know him?’

I said carefully, ‘I met him at the hospital.’

‘Oh, yes; you would, of course.’ She smiled again, and there was a happy sparkle in her good eye. ‘One never thinks of policemen as ordinary human beings - just
shadows dashing about on television arresting people. Peter is such a delightful man.’

I agreed that a policeman’s lot, etc., ‘Must cramp their social lives.’

‘He just told me about Mayberry. It appears the man is quite insane. Penny told me about…about the mistake.’

‘So you know.’

‘She waited until I’d been home a few days. I suppose she was right to withhold it until then. I wasn’t in any condition to take more shocks. But how awful for her. It took a great deal of straight talking from me to make her carry on with Professor Lumsden.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

Gillian looked at me closely. ‘There’s something wrong between you and Penny, isn’t there? I think she’s unhappy about it. What is it, Malcolm?’

‘I don’t know if the trouble altogether concerns me,’ I said. ‘I rather think she’s unhappy about what happened to you, and then to your father.’

‘No,’ she said pensively. ‘She appears to involve you in it, and I don’t know why. She won’t talk about it, and that’s unlike her.’ She turned her head to the window as a car drew up. ‘Here she is now. You’ll stay for lunch, of course.’

‘Glad to.’

I was pleased to find that Penny was pleased to see me. ‘Oh, Malcolm!’ she cried, and hurried to meet me. I met her half way across the room, took her in my arms, and kissed her.

‘I was very sorry to hear about your father.’

She looked beyond me to where Gillian sat, and said quietly, ‘I want to talk to you about that afterwards.’

I nodded. ‘Very well.’

‘A sherry,’ she said. ‘A sherry, to save my life. Lummy and I have talked our throats dry this morning.’

So we had lunch, at which we chatted amiably and kept away from controversial subjects. We discussed Gillian’s forthcoming trip to the United States, and Penny asked about my experiences there. ‘I was told where you were,’ she said obliquely.

Later she said, ‘Gillian and I have decided to sell the house. It’s much too big for the two of us, so we’ve decided to set ourselves up in a decent flat in town. Gillian will be closer to the theatres and concert halls, and I won’t have to commute to the lab.’

‘That sounds sensible,’ I said. ‘When do you move?’

‘I’ll be going to America with Gillian,’ she said. ‘We’re selecting some of the best pieces from here and the rest will be auctioned, the antiques at Sotheby’s and the rest of the stuff from the house. But we’ll be in America then. I couldn’t bear to stay and see the place sold up. So I suppose the auction will be in about three weeks. I’m making the final arrangements this afternoon.’

And that would put paid to Michaelis’s fun and games with the model railway. I wondered if he was preparing to put in a bid.

After lunch Gillian pleaded tiredness and went to rest in her room, but I rather think she wanted to leave us alone together. Penny and I sat before the blazing fire with a pot of coffee and I could tell she was getting set for a serious discussion. ‘Malcolm,’ she said, ‘what’s the truth about Daddy?’

I offered her one of my American cigarettes which she took. ‘I don’t think anyone will ever know.’

‘Did he die the way they said? You must know, being who you are, even though you were in America at the time. You were investigating him, after all.’

‘My information is that he was in a Swedish army proving ground where they were using live ammunition when he was killed.’

‘And that’s the truth?’ she said steadily. ‘You wouldn’t he to me?’

‘That’s the truth.’ But not the whole truth, Jaggard, you bastard!

She was silent for a while, gazing into the flames. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t understand any of it. What was he doing in Sweden?’

‘Apparently nothing very much, from what I can gather. He was living quietly in Stockholm with Benson to look after him. He read a lot and went to the occasional concert. A quiet and placid life.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘The department checked, of course.’

‘Of course,’ she said colourlessly. ‘I’m going to Sweden. I want to find out for myself. Will you come with me?’

That was a poser! I could imagine the expression on the face of the colonel of the Royal Södermanland Regiment if I poked my nose into Strängnäs again. I needed no imagination at all to picture the cold grey eyes of Captain Morelius of Swedish Army Intelligence.

‘That may not be easy,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been transferred and my time isn’t my own.’

‘Transferred from your department?’

‘No, just within the department, but I may be office-bound from now on. Still, I’ll see what I can do.’ Which would be precisely nothing. ‘Look, Penny, how would it be if I arranged for you to talk with my chief? He can tell you all that’s known about your father in Sweden.’ And he can tell my damned lies for me, I thought savagely.

She thought about it, then said, ‘Very well. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to Sweden.’

‘I’ll arrange it.’ I rose to pour us some more coffee. ‘Penny, what’s happening to us? I still want to marry you, but every time I get near the subject you edge away. I’m
very much in love with you and it’s becoming damned frustrating. Have you turned off?’

She cried, ‘Oh, Malcolm, I’m sorry; I really am. Everything turned topsy-turvy so suddenly. First there was Gillian, then Daddy - and then you. I’ve been going about looking at people I know and wondering if what I think I know is really so. Even Lummy has come under scrutiny - I’m beginning to worry him, I think. He imagines I’m going paranoid.’

‘It’s not been too easy for me, either,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Ashton case.’

‘The Ashton case,’ she repeated. ‘Is that what they call it?’ When I nodded, she said, ‘That takes the humanity out of it, doesn’t it? When it’s a “case” it’s easy to forget the flesh and blood because a case is mostly dockets and paperwork. How would you like to be referred to as the Jaggard case?’

‘Not much,’ I said sombrely.

Penny took my hand. ‘Malcolm, you’ll have to give me time. I think - no - I
know
I love you, but I’m still a bit mixed up; and I don’t know that I’m too happy about what you do with your life. That’s something else which needs thinking about.’

‘My God!’ I said. ‘You make it sound as though I go about eating live babies. I’m just a dreary counter-espionage man specializing in industry and making sure too many secrets don’t get pinched.’

‘You mean weapons?’

I shook my head. ‘Not necessarily. That’s not our pigeon - and we’re not interested in the latest toothpaste additive, either. But if an engineering firm has ploughed a couple of millions into research and come up with something revolutionary, then we don’t want some foreign Johnny nicking it and going into competition with a head start And, don’t forget, the foreign Johnnies from the East are state supported.’

‘But these things are patented, aren’t they?’

‘Patents are a dead giveaway. The really big stuff isn’t patented, especially in electronics. If you produce a new electronic chip which does the work of eleventy thousand transistors the opposition can put the thing under a microscope and see what you’ve done, but how the hell you’ve done it is quite another thing, and our boys aren’t telling. They’re certainly not going to disclose the process in a published patent.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘But that means you’re just another sort of policeman.’

‘Most of the time,’ I said. ‘Our problem is that the theft of information, as such, is not illegal in this country. Suppose I stole a sheet of paper from your lab, say, and I was caught. I’d be found guilty of the theft of a piece of paper worth one penny, and I’d suffer the appropriate penalty. The fact that written on that paper was some formula worth a million quid wouldn’t count’

Her voice rose. ‘But that’s silly.’

‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Do you want to hear something really silly? A few years ago a chap was caught tapping a post office line. The only charge they could get him on was the theft of a quantity of electricity, the property of the Postmaster-General. It was about a millionth of a watt.’ Penny laughed, and I said, ‘Anyway, that’s my job, and it doesn’t seem all that heinous to me.’

‘Nor to me, now you’ve explained it. But where did Daddy come into this?’

I said, ‘You may not realize how important a man your father was. The catalysts he was developing were revolutionizing the economics of the oil industry and helping the economics of the country. When a man like that goes missing we want to know if anyone has been putting pressure on him, and why. Of course, if he’s just running away from a shrewish wife then it’s his affair, and we drop it. That’s happened before,’

‘And what conclusions did you come to about Daddy?’

‘At first we tied it in with the attack on Gillian,’ I said. ‘But that’s a dead end; we know Mayberry was a loner. As it is, as far as the department could make out, your father was living quietly in Stockholm and apparently taking an extended holiday. There’s nothing we could do about that.’

‘No,’ said Penny. ‘We’re not yet a police state. What’s being done now?’

I shrugged. ‘The committee of brains at the top has decided to drop the matter.’

‘I see.’ She stared into the fire for a long time, then shook her head. ‘But you’ll have to give me time, Malcolm. Let me go to America. I’d like to get away from here and think. I’d like to…’

I held up my hand. ‘Point taken - no further argument. Change of subject. What were you doing in Scotland?’ I was damned glad to change the subject; I’d been shaving the truth a bit too finely.

‘Oh, that. Acting as adviser in the reconstruction of a laboratory. It’s been worrying me because they’re only willing to go up to P3 and I’m recommending P4. I was arguing it out with Lumsden this morning and he thinks I’m a bit…well, paranoiac about it.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said. ‘What’s P3? To say nothing of P4.’

‘Oh, I forgot.’ She waved her hand at the room. ‘I was so used to talking things out here with Daddy that I’d forgotten you’re a layman.’ She looked at me doubtfully. ‘It’s a bit technical,’ she warned.

‘That’s all right. Mine is a technical job.’

‘I suppose I’d better start with the big row,’ she said. ‘An American geneticist called Paul Berg…’

It seemed that Berg blew the whistle. He thought the geneticists were diddling around with the gene in the same way the physicist had diddled around with the atom in the
’20s and ’30s, and the potential hazards were even more horrendous. He pointed out some of them.

It seems that the favourite laboratory animal of the geneticists is a bacterium called
Escherichia coli
and it is the most studied organism on earth - more is known about
E.coli
than about any other living thing. It was natural that this creature be used for genetic experimentation.

‘There’s only one snag about that,’ said Penny.
‘E.coli
is a natural inhabitant of the human gut, and I don’t mean by ones and twos - I mean by the million. So if you start tinkering around with
E.coli
you’re doing something potentially dangerous.’

‘For example?’ I asked.

‘You remember Lummy’s example of genetic transfer from
Rhizobium
to make an improved wheat. I said we’d have to be careful not to transfer another, more dangerous, gene. Now, consider this. Supposing you incorporated into
E.coli
, accidentally or on purpose, the gene specifying the male hormone, testosterone. And supposing that strain of
E.coli
escaped from the laboratory and entered the human population. It would inhabit the digestive tracts of women, too, you know. They might start growing beards and stop having babies.’

‘Christ!’ I said. ‘It would be a catastrophe.’

‘Berg and some of his concerned friends called an international conference at Asilomar in California in 1975. It was well attended by the world’s geneticists but there was much controversy. Gradually a policy was hammered out involving the concept of biological containment. Certain dangerous experiments were to be banned pending the development of a strain of
E.coli
unable to survive outside the laboratory and unable to colonize the human gut. The specification laid down was that the survival rate of the new strain should not be more than one in a thousand million.’

I smiled. ‘That sounds like certainty.’

‘It’s not,’ said Penny soberly, ‘considering the numbers of
E.coli
around, but it’s close. I think that was the most important conference in the history of science. For the first time scientists had got together to police themselves without having restrictions thrust upon them. I think at the back of all our minds was the bad example set by the atomic physicists.’

Fifteen months later the development of the new strain was announced by the University of Alabama. Penny laughed. ‘A writer in
New Scientist
put it very well. He called it “the world’s first creature designed to choose death over liberty”.’