Yesterday's Spy (14 page)

It was the Bishop who found me a billet on Friday night. There were three of us. We got on to platform four, where the Guildford train was about to leave, and then slipped round behind the buffers to a darkened train that would not go until morning. It was the Bishop who had the square-sectioned key that opens the guard's-van doors. The Bishop settled into the narrow pew from which the periscope gives a view along the train top, while I kipped with Fuller, wedged behind some freight. Fuller was a hatchet-faced thirty-year-old. He wore a battered leather coat and a red-and-white woolly hat. He was a sociology graduate from Sussex University who ‘weaseled' luggage for the boat-train passengers and was not above stealing the occasional camera or transistor radio. Such items went on sale in The Cut street-market, not thirty yards away, while the owner was still searching the taxi line to locate the ‘well-spoken porter' and trying to remember when he last renewed the insurance.

‘It's my back,' explained the Bishop. ‘Sleeping on the floor plays merry hell with my back.'

‘Spare us the details,' said Fuller. ‘We know all about the state of your health.'

‘You'll be old yourself someday,' said the Bishop.

‘You need a bit of exercise,' said Fuller, ‘that's what you need. You come and help me with that boat-train tomorrow. It'll be a good one, they say.'

‘I wish I could, but I'd do myself an injury,' said the Bishop. He wriggled into the upholstered seat and searched inside his hat. He kept everything in there: paper money, cigarette stubs, string and matches. Finally he found the matches he wanted. Then he searched through his pockets until he found a tin. It was dented and all vestiges of advertising lettering had long since been polished away. Now it shone like silver, and from inside it he took a cigarette-rolling machine. ‘Exercise is no good to anybody,' said the Bishop. ‘Who lives to be a hundred? These fellers you see jogging down the road in a track suit at night, or those old cows with their poodles and their chauffeurs and their afternoon naps? You answer me that.'

‘Trust you to rationalize it out,' said Fuller, but he found no easy answer to the old man's contention.

The Bishop smiled. He was like some down-at-heel Father Christmas, his beard stained with nicotine and his teeth long and yellow. And yet he did not smell: for a tramp, that was quite an achievement.

‘Either of you two want a smoke?' he said. He rolled them carefully, thin tubes of white paper, marked with the Bishop's grey dabs, and spilling dried tobacco.

‘Thanks, Bish,' I said. But Fuller did not smoke. Even before the Bishop had given me a light, Fuller was beginning to snore.

‘First today,' said the Bishop proudly, holding the roll-up in the air.

‘My first for six days,' I said.

‘You want to give it up, son,' he said. As he inhaled, the burning cigarette lit up his arthritic knuckles and watery eyes. ‘Money going up in smoke: my old mother said it, and she was right.'

‘And what did your mother do with her bread?' I said. ‘Play the stock exchange?'

‘You've been in nick, haven't you, son?'

‘I was working the North Sea oil rigs. I told you that.'

‘Yeah, you told me that,' said the Bishop. ‘But I'm saying you've been doing porridge!'

I pinched out the cigarette and pushed it into the top pocket of his tattered overcoat.

‘Naw, no offence, son.'

‘Get stuffed,' I said.

‘No need to get nasty.'

‘Think yourself lucky I didn't poke it down your throat,' I said.

‘I'm old enough to be your father.'

‘But not bright enough.' I turned over and closed my eyes.

I only dozed for a moment or two before I heard the old man's voice again. He was leaning out of the window. ‘They're raking everybody out,' he said. ‘Like they did last week. It must be another bloody bomb warning.'

We scattered before the police reached the front carriage. I evaded the half-asleep porters and ticket men, and shuffled off down the freight road that bisects the station layout.

‘In here.' I was too tired to recognize the voice. For a moment I thought it was the Bishop, or Fuller.

‘In here.' It was not any of the layabouts from the station. It was a short thickset man named Pierce, who was from the department, and behind him I saw Schlegel. They were crowded into a phone booth. I moved fast. I hit Schlegel first, and he reeled. There was a crunch as his elbow hit a metal panel. I saw the look of open-mouthed bewilderment on Pierce's face, and then I slammed two body punches into him and hooked him as he doubled up. The two of them were jammed tight into the corner of the phone booth; neither stood much chance against me, for I had room to swing my elbows. I hit Schlegel again, and tapped blood from his nose. I gave him a moment to collect himself. ‘Easy, easy,' he grunted. He was tucking his chin in and holding up his hands in a gesture that was neither defence nor surrender, but had a measure of both.

Pierce was huddled almost on the floor, and Schlegel was twisted into a corner, with the phone jammed into his backside. ‘What did I tell you, that day in the Scrubs,' I said.

Schlegel stared at me. I not only looked different: I was different. The world had worn me shiny. Prodded awake by cops, cursed by screws, threatened by yobs who wanted your coat, or thought you might have cash. How did a man survive it, except by violence. The world was at your knees, or at your throat. Or so it seemed at the time. But the look in Schlegel's eyes made me realize how far I'd come down the long road.

‘You got the passport and everything?' said Schlegel. ‘You should be in France.'

‘You stupid sod. You people never learn, do you? Champion is one of ours – or was once – he knows all that departmental crap. Our Swiss passports would never fool him for thirty seconds. It went into the furnace along with the letters of credit. Me and Champion set up that payment line back in 1941. It was his idea.' I straightened up, and pushed my fist into the small of my back, to ease the aches and pains of sleeping on the hard floor of the guard's van.

But I kept them both pinned tight into the booth, with Pierce on the floor. Schlegel tried to move, but I forced him back into the corner with my forearm, and he only retained his balance by treading on Pierce's leg. ‘Champion is going to come and find
me
,' I told them. ‘He won't buy it any other way. And I'm not sure he'll swallow it, even without you stupid bastards trying to hurry things along.' I stopped. I was so tired I could have lain down on the street and sobbed myself to sleep. But I rubbed my face, and blinked, and shook my brains from side to side until I heard a reassuring rattle. ‘And if he
doesn't
buy it,' I said, ‘I get dead. So forgive me, girls, if I'm a little bit sensitive. Because I've got a whole lot of dances on my programme, I don't need a hand up my skirt.'

‘OK,' said Schlegel. ‘You're right.' He found a handkerchief and dabbed his bloody nose.

‘You'd just better believe it, Schlegel, because next time I won't be just tweaking your nose. You want to give me credentials for Champion? Great! I'll kill you, Schlegel. And I'll cool any of the boys you bring along, and not even Champion will think that was a set-up.'

‘You don't talk to me like that,' growled Schlegel, and he coughed as he sniffed his own blood. I had him, and he knew it, and I leaned across and with the knuckle of my left fist I tapped his jaw, as one might when playing with a baby. And he didn't take his eyes off my right fist, that was all set to drive him into the wall.

‘Give me some money,' I said.

He reached into his inside pocket and found three crumpled five-pound notes. I took them from him, and then I stepped backwards and I felt Pierce's feet sprawl out. I almost ran down the slope towards York Road.

It was a full moon. ‘Hello, son,' said the Bishop, as I overtook him. He was hurrying down the traffic ramp, with his bundle of belongings slung over his back. ‘A regular purge tonight, eh?' He chuckled.

‘Looks like,' I said. ‘But I can buy us a night's kip, and a plate of eggs and sausage.' I brandished the money.

‘You shouldn't have done it,' said the Bishop. He was not looking at the notes in my hand, but at Schlegel's blood on my cuff and knuckles.

‘We've been together all evening,' I said.

‘Portsmouth train, platform eighteen,' said the Bishop.

‘Near the front,' I agreed happily, ‘in a non-smoker.'

The next day, I tried for job number eighteen on my list. It was a small private bank off Fetter Lane. It specialized in everything from sanction-breaking to fraud. I'd chosen my list of jobs with great care. A man with my qualifications, booted into the street, isn't going to apply for a trainee's job with ICI. These were all dodgy concerns, who knew how to double the five or six grand salary I was asking. But they put a hatchet-man with a big carnation alongside the drinks cabinet, and gave me two glasses of dry sherry and economic-recession talk. I was expecting it, because I had spent nearly five hours on the memo that ensured that each of these companies had a visit from a Special Branch officer at least a week before I arrived.

‘Thank the Lord for Saturday,' said the Bishop late Friday night as we sat in our local, nursing one glass of warm beer, and taking simulated swigs at it whenever the landlord glared at us.

‘What's the difference?' I said. As far as I was concerned, it simply meant that I couldn't approach the next on the list of prospective employers until the weekend was passed. I leaned back and watched the colour TV on the bar. It was tuned to a comedy show but the sound was turned off.

Fuller said, ‘We go to the coast tomorrow.'

‘Do you?' I said.

‘The Bishop has this fiddle with the National Assistance …'

‘I told you not to tell him,' said the Bishop. He found a half-smoked cigarette in his hat.

‘Everybody knows, you old fool.' Fuller turned to me. ‘There's a friendly clerk on the paying-out counter. He calls your name, pays you unemployment money, and then later you give him half of it back. He can't do it more than once a month, or they'd tumble to him.' Fuller produced his matches and gave just one of them to the old man to light his cigarette end. ‘Bloody disgusting, isn't he?' said Fuller.

‘The Phantom Army, they call it,' said the Bishop. He took a deep drag of the cigarette smoke, and then a swig of the bitter, to celebrate the next day's payment.

‘We can row you in on that one,' Fuller offered. ‘Can't we, Dad?'

‘I suppose so,' said the old man grudgingly.

‘You're on,' I said. ‘How do you get to the coast? You don't pay the train fare, do you?'

‘Couldn't make it pay then, could you?' said Fuller defensively. ‘We fiddle the tickets from one of the booking clerks.'

‘It's a complicated life,' I remarked.

‘You don't
have
to come,' said the Bishop.

‘I wasn't complaining,' I said.

‘You went after a job today,' said the Bishop.

‘That's it,' I admitted.

Fuller looked me up and down with interest. He paid special attention to my newly washed shirt and carefully brushed coat. ‘You wouldn't catch me poncing off the capitalist system,' said Fuller finally.

‘Same again?' I said. ‘Pints of bitter?'

‘I wouldn't say no,' said Fuller.

‘Thanks, son,' said the Bishop.

Saturday morning. The Southampton train was not full. We caught it with only a few seconds to spare. Fuller led the way, through the buffet car and a luggage van. Even while the train was still stumbling over the points outside the station, I knew that this was the sort of way Champion would make contact.

‘Go ahead,' said the Bishop. He indicated the door leading to the next coach and the first-class compartments.

I went forward.

In the corridor, outside his compartment, two men in lumpy raincoats took exceptional interest in the dilapidated back yards of Lambeth and did not give me a glance. Champion looked up from
The Financial Times
and smiled.

‘Surprised?' said Champion.

‘Not very.'

‘No, of course not. Come and sit down. We've got a lot to talk about.' Beyond him the cramped slums became high-rise slums, and then semi-detached houses and sports fields.

In my hand I was holding one of the Bishop's roll-ups. I put it in my mouth as I searched my pockets for matches.

‘Been having a rough time?' said Champion.

I nodded.

He leaned forward and snatched the cigarette out of my mouth. He clenched his fist to screw it up, and threw the mangled remains of it to the floor. ‘Balls,' he said.

I looked at him without anger or surprise. He brought a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands on it. ‘Sleeping on railway stations: it's balls. I know you of old. You can't pass through a big town without dropping a few pounds here, and a gun there, and some bearer bonds in the next place. You of all people – sleeping on railway stations – crap, I say.' He looked out at the factories of Weybridge, and the streets crowded with weekend shoppers.

‘You're losing your cool, Steve,' I said. He didn't answer or turn his head. I said, ‘Certainly I've got a few quid stashed away, but I'm not leading the band of the Grenadier Guards there for a ceremonial opening.'

Champion looked at me for a moment, then he threw his packet of cigarettes. I caught them. I lit one and smoked for a minute or two. ‘And I'm not even taking
you
there,' I added.

Champion said, ‘I'm offering you a job.'

I let him wait for an answer. ‘That might turn out to be a bad move,' I told him. ‘A bad move for both of us.'

‘You mean the department will be breathing down my neck because I've given you a job,' he nodded. ‘Well, you let me worry about that, Charlie, old son.' He watched me with the care and calculation that a nightclub comic gives a drunk.