The Human Factor

  In the hall he still hesitated. The stained glass above the door cast lozenges of yellow, green and blue upon the floor. It occurred to him that if he carried the revolver in his hand when he opened the door the police would have the right to shoot him down in self-defence – it would be an easy solution; nothing would ever be publicly proved against a dead man. Then he reproached himself with the thought that none of his actions must be dictated by despair any more than by hope. He left the gun in his pocket and opened the door.

  ‘Daintry,’ he exclaimed. He hadn’t expected a face he knew.

  ‘Can I come in?’ Daintry asked in a tone of shyness.

  ‘Of course.’

  Buller suddenly emerged from his retirement. ‘He’s not dangerous,’ Castle said as Daintry stepped back. He caught Buller by the collar, and Buller dropped his spittle between them like a fumbling bridegroom might drop the wedding ring. ‘What are you doing here, Daintry?’

  ‘I happened to be driving through and I thought I’d look you up.’ The excuse was so palpably untrue that Castle felt sorry for Daintry. He wasn’t like one of those smooth, friendly and fatal interrogators who were bred by MI5. He was a mere security officer who could be trusted to see that rules were not broken and to check briefcases.

  ‘Will you have a drink?’

  ‘I’d like one.’ Daintry’s voice was hoarse. He said – it was as though he had to find an excuse for everything – ‘It’s a cold wet night.’

  ‘I haven’t been out all day.’

  ‘You haven’t?’

  Castle thought: that’s a bad slip if the telephone call this morning was from the office. He added, ‘Except to take the dog into the garden.’

  Daintry took the glass of whisky and looked long at it and then round the sitting-room, little quick snapshots like a press photographer. You could almost hear the eyelids click. He said, ‘I do hope I’m not disturbing you. Your wife . . .’

  ‘She’s not here. I’m quite alone. Except of course for Buller.’

  ‘Buller?’

  ‘The dog.’

  The deep silence of the house was emphasized by the two voices. They broke it alternately, uttering unimportant phrases.

  ‘I hope I haven’t drowned your whisky,’ Castle said. Daintry still hadn’t drunk. ‘I wasn’t thinking . . .’

  ‘No, no. It’s just as I like it.’ Silence dropped again like the heavy safety curtain in a theatre.

  Castle began with a confidence, ‘As a matter of fact I’m in a bit of trouble.’ It seemed a useful moment to establish Sarah’s innocence.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘My wife has left me. With my son. She’s gone to my mother’s.’

  ‘You mean you’ve quarrelled?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Daintry said. ‘It’s awful when these things happen.’ He seemed to be describing a situation which was as inevitable as death. He added, ‘Do you know the last time we met – at my daughter’s wedding? It was very kind of you to come with me to my wife’s afterwards. I was very glad to have you with me. But then I broke one of her owls.’

  ‘Yes. I remember.’

  ‘I don’t think I even thanked you properly for coming. It was a Saturday too. Like today. She was terribly angry. My wife, I mean, about the owl.’

  ‘We had to leave suddenly because of Davis.’

  ‘Yes, poor devil.’ Again the safety curtain dropped as though after an old-fashioned curtain line. The last act would soon begin. It was time to go to the bar. They both drank simultaneously.

  ‘What do you think about his death?’ Castle asked.

  ‘I don’t know what to think. To tell you the truth I try not to think.’

  ‘They believe he was guilty of a leak in my section, don’t they?’

  ‘They don’t confide much in a security officer. What makes you think that?’

  ‘It’s not a normal routine to have Special Branch men in to search when one of us dies.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘You found the death odd too?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Have we reversed our roles, Castle thought, am I interrogating him?

  ‘You said just now you tried not to think about his death.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t know what I meant. Perhaps it’s your whisky. You didn’t exactly drown it, you know.’

  ‘Davis never leaked anything to anyone,’ Castle said. He had the impression Daintry was looking at his pocket where it sagged on the cushion of the chair with the weight of the gun.

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘I know it.’

  He couldn’t have said anything which damned himself more completely. Perhaps after all Daintry was not so bad an interrogator; and the shyness and confusion and self-revelations he had been displaying might really be part of a new method which would put his training as a technician in a higher class than MI5’s.

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wondered what Daintry would do now. He hadn’t the power of arrest. He would have to find a telephone and consult the office. The nearest telephone was at the police station at the bottom of King’s Road – he would surely not have the nerve to ask if he might use Castle’s? And had he identified the weight in the pocket? Was he afraid? I would have time after he leaves to make a run for it, Castle thought, if there was anywhere to run to; but to run without a destination, simply to delay the moment of capture, was an act of panic. He preferred to wait where he was – that would have at least a certain dignity.

  ‘I’ve always doubted it,’ Daintry said, ‘to tell you the truth.’

  ‘So they did confide in you?’

  ‘Only for the security checks. I had to arrange those.’

  ‘It was a bad day for you, wasn’t it, first to break that owl and then to see Davis dead on his bed?’

  ‘I didn’t like what Doctor Percival said.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘He said, “I hadn’t expected this to happen.”’

  ‘Yes. I remember now.’

  ‘It opened my eyes,’ Daintry said. ‘I saw what they’d been up to.’

  ‘They jumped too quickly to conclusions. They didn’t properly investigate the alternatives.’

  ‘You mean yourself?’

  Castle thought, I’m not going to make it that easy for them, I’m not going to confess in so many words, however effective this new technique of theirs may be. He said, ‘Or Watson.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten Watson.’

  ‘Everything in our section passes through his hands. And then, of course, there’s 69300 in L.M. They can’t properly check his accounts. Who knows if he hasn’t a bank deposit in Rhodesia or South Africa?’

  ‘True enough,’ Daintry said.

  ‘And our secretaries. It’s not only our personal secretaries who may be involved. They all belong to a pool. Don’t tell me that a girl doesn’t go sometimes to the loo without locking up the cable she’s been decoding or the report she’s been typing?’

  ‘I realize that. I checked the pool myself. There has always been a good deal of carelessness.’

  ‘Carelessness can begin at the top too. Davis’s death may have been an example of criminal carelessness.’

  ‘If he wasn’t guilty it was murder,’ Daintry said. ‘He had no chance to defend himself, to employ counsel. They were afraid of the effect a trial might have upon the Americans. Doctor Percival talked to me about boxes . . .’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Castle said. ‘I know that spiel. I’ve heard it often myself. Well, Davis is in a box all right now.’

  Castle was aware that Daintry’s eyes were on his pocket. Was Daintry pretending to agree with him so as to escape safely back to his car? Daintry said, ‘You and I are making the same mistake – jumping to conclusions. Davis may have been guilty. What makes you so certain he wasn’t?’

  ‘You have to look for motives,’ Castle said. He had hesitated, he had evaded, but he had been s
trongly tempted to reply, ‘Because I am the leak.’ He felt sure by this time that the line was cut and he could expect no help, so what was the purpose of delaying? He liked Daintry, he had liked him ever since the day of his daughter’s wedding. He had become suddenly human to him over the smashed owl, in the solitude of his smashed marriage. If anyone were to reap credit for his confession he would like it to be Daintry. Why therefore not give up and go quietly, as the police often put it? He wondered if he were prolonging the game only for the sake of company, to avoid the solitude of the house and the solitude of a cell.

  ‘I suppose the motive for Davis would have been money,’ Daintry said.

  ‘Davis didn’t care much about money. All he needed was enough to bet a little on the horses and treat himself to a good port. You have to examine things a bit closer than that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If our section was the one suspected the leaks could only have concerned Africa.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s plenty of other information that passes through my section – that we pass on – that must be of greater interest to the Russians, but if the leak was there, don’t you see, the other sections would be suspect too? So the leak can only be about our particular share of Africa.’

  ‘Yes,’ Daintry agreed, ‘I see that.’

  ‘That seems to indicate – well, if not exactly an ideology – you don’t need to look necessarily for a Communist – but a strong attachment to Africa – or to Africans. I doubt if Davis had ever known an African.’ He paused and then added with deliberation and a certain feeling of joy in the dangerous game, ‘Except, of course, my wife and my child.’ He was putting the dots on an i, but he wasn’t going to cross the t’s as well. He went on, ‘69300 has been a long time in L.M. No one knows what friendships he’s made – he has his African agents, many of them Communist.’

  After so many years of concealment he was beginning to enjoy this snake-and-ladder game. ‘Just as I had in Pretoria,’ he continued. He smiled, ‘Even C, you know, has a certain love of Africa.’

  ‘Oh, there you are joking,’ Daintry said.

  ‘Of course I’m joking. I only want to show how little they had against Davis compared with others, myself or 69300 – and all those secretaries about whom we know nothing.’

  ‘They were all carefully vetted.’

  ‘Of course they were. We’ll have the names of all their lovers on the files, lovers anyway of that particular year, but some girls change their lovers like they change their winter clothes.’

  Daintry said, ‘You’ve mentioned a lot of suspects, but you are so sure about Davis.’ He added, unhappily, ‘You’re lucky not to be a security officer. I nearly resigned after Davis’s funeral. I wish I had.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘What would I have done to pass the time?’

  ‘You could have collected car numbers. I did that once.’

  ‘Why did you quarrel with your wife?’ Daintry asked. ‘Forgive me. That’s no business of mine.’

  ‘She disapproved of what I’m doing.’

  ‘You mean for the firm?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Castle could tell the game was nearly over. Daintry had surreptitiously looked at his wrist watch. He wondered whether it was a real watch or a disguised microphone. Perhaps he thought he had come to the end of his tape. Would he ask to go to the lavatory so that he could change it?

  ‘Have another whisky.’

  ‘No. I’d better not. I have to drive home.’

  Castle went with him to the hall, and Buller too. Buller was sorry to see a new friend leave.

  ‘Thanks for the drink,’ Daintry said.

  ‘Thank you for the chance to talk about a lot of things.’

  ‘Don’t come out. It’s a beastly night.’ But Castle followed him into the cold drizzle. He noticed the tail lights of a car fifty yards down the road opposite the police station.

  ‘Is that your car?’

  ‘No. Mine’s a little way up the road. I had to walk down because I couldn’t see the numbers in this rain.’

  ‘Good night then.’

  ‘Good night. I hope things go all right – I mean with your wife.’

  Castle stood in the slow cold rain long enough to wave to Daintry as he passed. His car didn’t stop, he noticed, at the police station but turned right and took the London road. Of course he could always stop at the King’s Arms or the Swan to use the telephone, but even in that case Castle doubted whether he would have a very clear report to make. They would probably want to hear his tape before making a decision – Castle felt sure now the watch was a microphone. Of course, the railway station might already be watched and the immigration officers warned at the airports. One fact had surely emerged from Daintry’s visit. Young Halliday must have begun to talk or they would never have sent Daintry to see him.

  At his door he looked up and down the road. There was no apparent watcher, but the lights of the car opposite the police station still shone through the rain. It didn’t look like a police car. The police – he supposed even those of the Special Branch – had to put up with British makes and this – he couldn’t be sure but it looked like a Toyota. He remembered the Toyota on the road to Ashridge. He tried to make out the colour, but the rain obscured it. Red and black were indistinguishable through the drizzle which was beginning to turn to sleet. He went indoors and for the first time he dared to hope.

  He took the glasses to the kitchen and washed them carefully. It was as though he were removing the fingerprints of his despair. Then he laid two more glasses in the sitting-room, and for the first time he encouraged hope to grow. It was a tender plant and it needed a great deal of encouragement, but he told himself that the car was certainly a Toyota. He wouldn’t let himself think how many Toyotas there were in the region but waited in patience for the bell to ring. He wondered who it was who would come and stand in Daintry’s place on the threshold. It wouldn’t be Boris – he was sure of that – and neither would it be young Halliday who was only out of custody on sufferance and was probably deeply engaged now with men from the Special Branch.

  He went back to the kitchen and gave Buller a plate of biscuits – perhaps it would be a long time before he would be able to eat again. The clock in the kitchen had a noisy tick which seemed to make time go more slowly. If there was really a friend in the Toyota he was taking a long time to appear.

  4

  Colonel Daintry pulled into the yard of the King’s Arms. There was only one car in the yard, and he sat for a while at the wheel, wondering whether to telephone now and what to say if he did. He had been shaken with a secret anger during his lunch at the Reform with C and Doctor Percival. There were moments when he had wanted to push his plate of smoked trout aside and say, ‘I resign. I don’t want to have any more to do with your bloody firm.’ He was tired to death of secrecy and of errors which had to be covered up and not admitted. A man came across the yard from the outside lavatory whistling a tuneless tune, buttoning his flies in the security of the dark, and went on into the bar. Daintry thought, They killed my marriage with their secrets. During the war there had been a simple cause – much simpler than the one his father knew. The Kaiser had not been a Hitler, but in the cold war they were now fighting it was possible, as in the Kaiser’s war, to argue right and wrong. There was nothing clear enough in the cause to justify murder by mistake. Again he found himself in the bleak house of his childhood, crossing the hall, entering the room where his father and his mother sat hand in hand. ‘God knows best,’ his father said, remembering Jutland and Admiral Jellicoe. His mother said, ‘My dear, at your age, it’s difficult to find another job.’ He turned off his lights and moved through the slow heavy rainfall into the bar. He thought: My wife has enough money, my daughter is married, I could live – somehow – on my pension.

  On this cold wet night there was only one man in the bar – he was drinking a pint of bitter. He said, ‘Good evening, sir’ a
s though they were well acquainted.

  ‘Good evening. A double whisky,’ Daintry ordered.

  ‘If you can call it that,’ the man said as the barman turned away to hold a glass below a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

  ‘Call what?’

  ‘The evening, I meant, sir. Though this weather’s only to be expected, I suppose, in November.’

  ‘Can I use your telephone?’ Daintry asked the barman.

  The barman pushed the whisky across with an air of rejection. He nodded in the direction of a box. He was clearly a man of few words: he was here to listen to what customers chose to say but not to communicate himself more than was strictly necessary, until – no doubt with pleasure – he would pronounce the phrase, ‘Time, Gentlemen.’

  Daintry dialled Doctor Percival’s number and while he listened to the engaged tone, he tried to rehearse the words he wished to use. ‘I’ve seen Castle . . . He’s alone in the house . . . He’s had a quarrel with his wife . . . There’s nothing more to report . . .’ He would slam down the receiver as he slammed it down now – then he went back to the bar and his whisky and the man who insisted on talking.

  ‘Uh,’ the barman said, ‘uh’ and once, ‘That’s right.’

  The customer turned to Daintry and included him in his conversation. ‘They don’t even teach simple arithmetic these days. I said to my nephew – he’s nine – what’s four times seven, and do you think he could tell me?’

  Daintry drank his whisky with his eye on the telephone box, still trying to make up his mind what words to use.