The Confidential Agent

  It was well on into the afternoon, among the high bare downs of Dorset, that Mr Forbes said, ‘You know you haven’t done so badly. You don’t think there’ll be – trouble – when you get home?’

  ‘It seems likely.’

  ‘But that explosion at Benditch – you know, it blew L.’s contract sky-high. That and K.’s death.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You haven’t got the coal yourself, but L. hasn’t got it either. We had a meeting early this morning. We’ve cancelled the contract. The risk is too great.’

  ‘The risk?’

  ‘To reopen the pits and then find the Government stepping in. You couldn’t have advertised the affair better if you’d bought the front page of the Mail. Already there’s been a leading article – about political gangsters and the civil war being fought out on English soil. We had to decide whether to sue the paper for libel or cancel the contract and announce that we had signed in good faith under the idea the coal was going to Holland. So we cancelled.’

  It was certainly half a victory; he thought grimly that it would probably postpone his death – he would be left to an enemy bomb, instead of reaching a solution of his problems quickly in front of the cemetery wall. On the crown of the hill they came in sight of the sea. He hadn’t seen it since that foggy night at Dover with the gulls crying – the limit of his mission. Far away to the right a rash of villas began; lights were coming out, and a pier crept out to sea like a centipede with an illuminated spine.

  ‘That’s Southcrawl,’ Mr Forbes said. There were no ships’ lights visible anywhere on the wide grey vanishing Channel. ‘It’s late,’ Mr Forbes said with a touch of nervousness.

  ‘Where do I go?’

  ‘See that hotel over on the left about two miles out of Southcrawl?’ They cruised slowly down the hill; it was more like a village than a hotel as they came down towards it – or, nearer comparison still, an airport: circle after circle of chromium bungalows round a central illuminated tower – fields and more bungalows. ‘It’s called the Lido,’ Mr Forbes said. ‘A new idea in popular hotels. A thousand rooms, playing fields, swimming pools . . .’

  ‘What about the sea?’

  ‘That’s not heated,’ Mr Forbes said. He looked slyly sideways. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve bought the place.’ He said, ‘We’re advertising it as a cruise on land. Organised games with a secretary. Concerts. A gymnasium. Young people encouraged – no reception clerk looking down his nose at the new Woolworth ring. Best of all, of course, no seasickness. And cheap.’ He sounded enthusiastic. He said, ‘Sally’s very keen. She’s great, you see, on physical fitness.’

  ‘You take a personal interest?’

  ‘I wish sometimes I could do more. A man must have a hobby. But I’ve got a fellow down now taking a look round the place. He’s had a lot of experience with roadhouses and things – if he likes the idea I’m putting him in complete charge at fifteen hundred a year and all found. We want to make it an all-the-year-round resort. You’ll see – the Christmas season’s beginning.’

  A little way up the road Mr Forbes stopped the car. He said, ‘Your room’s been booked for a night. You won’t be the first in this place to slip away without paying the bill. We shall report it, of course, to the police, but I daresay you don’t mind one more minor charge. Your number’s 105c.’

  ‘It sounds like a convict’s.’

  Mr Forbes said, ‘You’ll be fetched from your room. I don’t see that anything can go wrong. I won’t come any further. You ask at the office for your key.’

  D. said, ‘I know there’s no point in thanking you, but all the same . . .’ He stood beside the car: he felt at a loss for the right words. He said, ‘You’ll give my love to Rose, won’t you? And my congratulations, I do congratulate her . . .’ He broke off; he had surprised a look on Mr Forbes’s face which was almost one of hate. It must be a bitter thing to be accepted on such humiliating conditions – a dowry is less personal. He said, ‘She couldn’t have a better friend.’ Mr Forbes leant passionately forward and jabbed at the self-starter. He began to back. D. had a glimpse of the red-rimmed eyes. If it wasn’t hate, it was grief. He left Mr Forbes and walked down the road to the two neon-lighted pillars which marked the entrance of the Lido. Two enormous plum puddings in electric light bulbs had been set up on the pillars, but the wiring wasn’t completed; they looked black, steely, unappetising.

  The reception clerk occupied a little lodge just inside the grounds. He said, ‘Oh yes, your room was booked by telephone last night, Mr ⎯⎯’ he took a look at the register, ‘Davis. Your luggage, I suppose, is coming up?’

  ‘I walked from Southcrawl. It should be here.’

  ‘Shall I telephone to the station?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll give them an hour or two. One doesn’t have to dress for dinner, I imagine?’

  ‘Oh no. Nothing of that sort, Mr Davis. Perfect liberty. May I send the sports secretary along to your room for a chat?’

  ‘I think I’ll just breathe the air for twenty-four hours first.’

  He strolled round and round the big chromium circles – every room with a sun-bathing roof. Men in shorts, their knees a little blue with cold, were chasing each other hilariously in the dusk: a girl in pyjamas called out, ‘Have they picked up for basket ball, Spot?’ to a man with a bald head. 105c was like a cabin – there was even a sham port-hole instead of a window, and the washing basin folded back against the wall to make more room; you could almost imagine a slight smell of oil and the churning of the engines. He sighed. England, it appeared, was to maintain a certain strangeness to the very end: the eccentricities of a country which had known civil peace for two hundred and fifty years. There was a good deal of noise, the laughter which is known technically as happy, and several radios were playing, plugged in to different stations. The walls were very thin, so that you could hear everything which went on in the neighbouring rooms – a man seemed to be flinging his shoes against the wall. Like a cabin the room was overheated. He opened a port-hole, and almost at once a young man put his head through. ‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘Hullo in there!’

  ‘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 a
nd 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, ‘105c.’

  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 105c 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.’