The Confidential Agent (28 page)

‘Yes?' D. inquired wearily, sitting on the bed. It didn't seem likely that this was the summons he was waiting for. ‘Do you want me?'

‘Oh, sorry. I thought this was Chubby's room.'

‘What is it, Pig?' a girl's voice asked.

The young man's head disappeared. He whispered penetratingly on the gravel, ‘It's a foreign bloke.'

‘Let me take a look.'

‘Don't be silly. You can't.'

‘Oh, can't I?' A beaky girl with fluffy fair hair thrust her head through the window, giggled and disappeared again. A voice said, ‘
There's
Chubby. What've you been doing with yourself, you old rotter?'

D. lay on his back, thinking of Mr Forbes driving back through the dusk to London: was he going to see Rose or Sally? Somewhere a clock struck. This at last was the end; the sooner he was back now the better: he could begin to forget the absurd comic image which remained fixed in his mind of a girl tossing a bun into the fog. He fell asleep and woke again; half an hour had passed by his watch. How much longer? He went to the window and looked out; beyond the bar of lights from his own outer circle of steel bungalow there was nothing – just night and the sound of the sea washing up on shingle and withdrawing – the long sigh of a defeated element. In the whole arc of darkness not a light to show that any ship was standing in to shore.

He opened his door. There were no passages; every room opened immediately, as it were, on to the unsheltered deck. The clock tower, like the bridge of a ship, heaved among the clouds: a moon raced backwards through the marbled sky – a wind had risen, and the sea seemed very near. It seemed odd not to be pursued; for the first time since he landed nobody ‘wanted' him. He had the safe legal existence of a man on bail.

He walked briskly in the cold evening air past the little lighted overheated rooms. Music came up from Luxemburg, Stuttgart and Hilversum: radio was installed everywhere. Warsaw suffered from atmospherics, and National gave a talk on the Problem of Indo-China. Below the clock tower wide rubber steps led up to the big glass doors of the recreation centre. He walked in. Evening papers were laid out for sale on a central table – a saucer full of pennies showed that the trust system was in operation. There was a lot of boisterous laughter in one corner where a group of men were drinking whisky; otherwise the big draughty steel and glass room was empty – if you could talk of emptiness among all the small tables and club arm-chairs, the slot machines and boards for Corinthian bagatelle. There was even a milk bar, up beside the service door. D. realised that he hadn't a single penny in his pockets: Mr Forbes had not given him time to get his money back from the police. It would be awkward if the ship didn't turn up. . . . He looked down at the evening papers; he thought, with so many crimes on my head, I may as well add petty larceny. Nobody was looking. He sneaked a paper.

A voice he knew said, ‘It's a damned fine show.'

God, he thought, could only really be pictured as a joker – it was absurd to have come all this way only to encounter Captain Currie at the end of it. He remembered that Mr Forbes had spoken of a man with experience of road-houses. . . . Well, it hardly seemed a moment for amicable greetings. He spread the paper open and sheltered himself behind it. A rather servile voice said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but I think you've forgotten your penny.' A waiter must have come in under cover of that boisterous laughter – the trust system might be in operation, but they kept a careful watch on the number of pennies in the saucer. It didn't say much, he thought, for Chubby and Spot and the rest of Mr Forbes's clientèle.

He said, ‘Sorry. I haven't got any change.'

‘Oh, I can give you change, sir.'

D. had his back to the drinkers now, but he had a sense that the laughter had stopped and that they were listening. He said with his hand in his pocket, ‘I seem to have left my money in my other suit. I'll pay you later.'

‘What room, sir?' If counting pennies made you rich, they deserved a fortune.

He said, ‘105
c
.'

Captain Currie's voice said, ‘Well, I'm damned.'

It was no good trying to avoid the encounter. After all, he was on bail: there was nothing Currie could do. He turned and felt his poise a little shaken by Captain Currie's shorts – he had obviously been entering into the life of the place. D. said, ‘I hadn't expected to meet you here.'

‘I bet you hadn't,' Captain Currie said.

‘Well, I'll be seeing you, I expect, at dinner.' Paper in hand he moved towards the door.

Captain Currie said, ‘No, you don't. You stay where you are.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘This is the fellow I was telling you about, boys.' Two moony middle-aged faces stared at him with awe, a little flushed with Scotch.

‘No!'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm damned if he wasn't pinching a paper,' one of them said.

‘He's capable of anything,' Captain Currie said.

‘Would you mind,' D. said, ‘getting out of my way? I want to go to my room.'

‘I daresay,' Captain Currie said.

One of his companions said timidly, ‘Be careful, old man. He might carry a gun.'

D. said, ‘I don't quite know what you gentlemen think you are doing. I'm not a fugitive from justice – isn't that the phrase? I happen to have been bailed, and there's no law which says I can't spend my time where I like.'

‘He's a regular sea-lawyer,' one of the men said.

‘You'd better take things quietly,' Captain Currie said. ‘You've shot your bolt, man. You thought you'd get out of the country, I suppose – but you can't fool Scotland Yard. Best police force in the world.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Why, man, you must know there's a warrant out. Look in the stop press. You're wanted for murder.'

D. looked: it was there. Sir Terence Hillman had not fooled the police for long; they must have decided to take out a warrant as soon as he'd left the court. They were looking for him, and Captain Currie had, triumphantly, found him, and now watched him firmly, but with a kind of respect. Murder wasn't like stealing a car. It was the English tradition to treat a condemned man kindly – the breakfast before the execution. Captain Currie said, ‘Now, we are three to one. Take things quietly. It's no good making a scene.'

[2]

D. said, ‘Can I have a cigarette?'

‘Yes, yes, of course,' Captain Currie said. ‘Keep the whole packet.' He told the waiter, ‘Ring up Southcrawl police station and tell them that we've got him.'

‘Well,' one of his companions said, ‘we may as well sit down.'

They had an air of embarrassment, standing between him and the door; they were obviously doubtful whether they ought not to pinion his arms or tie him up or something, but at the same time they had a horror of being conspicuous: the place was too public. They were obviously relieved when D. sat down himself; they pulled their chairs up around him. ‘I say, Currie,' one of them said, ‘there'd be no harm in giving the fellow a drink.' He added, rather unnecessarily it seemed to D., ‘He's not likely to get another.'

‘What will you have?' Currie asked.

‘I think a whisky and soda.'

‘Scotch?'

‘Please.'

When the waiter came back, Currie said, ‘A Scotch. Get that message off?'

‘Yes, sir. They said they would be over in five minutes and you was to keep him.'

‘Of course we'll keep him. We aren't fools. What do they think?'

D. said, ‘I thought in England people are supposed to be innocent until they are proved guilty.'

‘Oh yes,' Currie said, ‘that's right. But of course the police don't arrest a man unless they've got the right dope.'

‘I see.'

‘Of course,' Captain Currie said, syphoning his whisky, ‘it's a mistake you foreigners make. In your own country you kill each other and nobody asks questions, but if you do that sort of thing in England, well, you're for it.'

‘Do you remember Blue?' one of the other men asked Currie.

‘Tony Blue?'

‘That's right. The one who played so badly in the Lancing-Brighton match in ‘twenty-one. Muffed five catches.'

‘What about Blue?'

‘He went to Rumania once. Saw a man fire at a bobby in the street. So he said.'

‘Of course, Blue was a stinking liar.'

D. said, ‘Would you mind if I went to my room for my things? One of you could come with me.' It occurred to him that, once in his room, it might be possible . . . when the messenger arrived. . . . They'd never find him here.

‘Better wait for the police,' Blue's friend said. ‘Mustn't take any risks.'

‘Might hit and run.'

‘I couldn't run far, could I?' D. said. ‘You're an island.'

‘I'm not taking any chances,' Currie said.

D. wondered whether whoever was fetching him had already gone to room 105
c
and found it empty.

Currie said, ‘Would you two fellows mind keeping an eye on the door for a moment while I have a word with him alone?'

‘Of course not, old man.'

Currie leant over his chair arm and said in a low voice, ‘Look here, you're a gentleman, aren't you?'

‘I'm not sure . . . it's an English word.'

‘What I mean is – you won't say more than you need. One doesn't want a decent girl mixed up in this sort of thing.'

‘I don't quite follow . . .'

‘Well, there was that story of a woman with you in the flat when that fellow Forester . . .'

‘I read “Fortescue” in the papers.'

‘Yes, that was it.'

‘Oh, I imagine the woman – of course, I don't know anything about it – was some prostitute or other.'

‘That's the idea,' Currie said. ‘Stout fellow.'

He called out to the others, ‘All right, you chaps. What about another Scotch all round?'

Blue's friend said, ‘This one's on me.'

‘No, you did the last. This is my turn.'

‘As a matter of fact,' the third said, ‘it's my turn.'

‘No, you did the one before last.'

‘Let's toss for it.'

While they argued D. stared out between the barrier of their shoulders to the big glass doors. The floodlights were on, so that beyond a few feet of grass outside nothing could be seen at all. The hotel was there for the world to look at, but the world itself was invisible. Somewhere in that invisibility the cargo ship was passing – to his own country. He almost wished that he hadn't surrendered his gun to the gang of children in Benditch, even though they had, in a way, proved successful. The one shot would have put an end to a very boring and long-drawn-out process.

A party of girls pushed in, bringing a little cold air into the overheated room. They were noisy and heavily made-up and rather unconvincing; they were trying to imitate the manner of a class more privileged than their own. They called out loudly, ‘Hullo, there's Captain Curly.'

Currie blushed all down the back of his neck. He said, ‘Look here, girls. Get yourselves drinks somewhere else. This is a private party.'

‘Why, Curly?'

‘We are talking important business.'

‘I expect it's just dirty stories. Tell.'

‘No, really, girls – I mean it.'

‘Why do they call you Curly?' D. asked.

Currie blushed again.

‘Introduce us to the fascinating stranger,' a fat girl said.

‘No, no. It's impossible. Absolutely no go.'

Two men in mackintoshes pushed open the door and looked into the recreation room. One of them said, ‘Is there anybody here called . . . ?'

Captain Currie said, ‘Thank God, are you the police?'

They watched him from the door. One of them said, ‘That's right.'

‘Here's your man.'

‘Are you D. ?' one of them said.

‘Yes.' D. stood up.

‘We have a warrant for your arrest on the charge of . . .'

‘Never mind,' D. said. ‘I know what it's all about.'

‘Anything you say . . .'

‘Yes. Yes. Let's go.' He said to the girls who stood gaping by the table, ‘You can have Curly now.'

‘This way,' the detective said. ‘We've a car at the gate.'

‘No handcuffs?'

‘I don't think they'll be needed,' the man said with a heavy smile. ‘Come on. Get moving.'

One of them took him by the arm, unobtrusively. They might have been friends leaving after a few drinks. The English law, he thought, was remarkably tactful: everybody in this country hated a scene. The night embraced them. Floodlights drowned the stars in favour of Mr Forbes's fantastic hobby. Far out at sea a light burned. Perhaps that was the ship in which he was supposed to leave – leave this country free from his infection and his friends free from embarrassment, from the dangerous disclosure and the untimely reticence. He wondered what Mr Forbes would say when he read the morning papers and found he hadn't gone.

‘Come on,' the detective said. ‘We've not got all night.'

They led him out past the neon lights, saluting the clerk with a flick of the hand as they went. After all, the charge of leaving without paying his bill would not be added to the other misdemeanours. The car was up on the grass verge with the lights discreetly out. It would not have been good for the hotel, he supposed, if a police car had been too prominently on view. The taxpayer in this country was always protected. A third man sat at the wheel. He started up as soon as they appeared and switched on the lights. D. got into the back between the two others. They swerved out on to the road and drove down towards Southcrawl.