‘It’s really the one I use for pressing wild flowers, but my wristwatch tape recorder is on the blink.’
‘How amusing,’ she said.
The blond man came back into the kitchen. From a hook behind the door he took a bright pink apron and put it on carefully, so as not to disarrange his hair. He began to place pieces of limp lettuce in wooden bowls. ‘Leave that for now, Sylvester. We’re talking. Do the wine.’
‘I’ll need warm water.’
‘Just get the bottles up from the cellar. We won’t be long.’ Reluctantly he went out. His denims had bright red patches sewn on the behind. He went down the stairs slowly.
I said, ‘What’s he going to do with the hot water? Put Mouton Rothschild labels on the Algerian?’
‘What a good idea,’ she said, in a voice calculated to prove that the cashmere had been chosen to match her blood.
‘You were with Mr Toliver when the accident happened?’
‘I was.’
‘And you and he were … ?’
‘I am a friend.’
‘A friend, yes.’
‘One more wisecrack like that and you will leave.’ But she gave me the inscrutable Snow-queen smile to keep me guessing.
‘You’d been out to dinner?’
‘With friends – business associates I should say – we were on the way back to my apartment. It was the North Circular Road where the accident happened – or so they told me later.’
I nodded. She wasn’t the sort of girl who’d recognize the North Circular Road and admit it.
‘The lorry driver pulled over too soon. He misjudged the distance.’
‘The police said the lorry was stopped at the lights.’
‘Sergeant Davis is driving me down to collect the Bentley this afternoon. I’ll clear it up then. He said it’s only a routine thing – thirty minutes or so and he’ll bring me back.’
Lucky old Sergeant Davis. If she’d been an old-age pensioner maybe he would have let her go down to collect the Bentley by bus.
‘What colour was the lorry?’
‘Maroon and beige.’
‘And there were two lorry drivers?’
‘Two, yes. Would you like some coffee?’
‘That would be great, Miss Shaw.’
‘Sara will do.’ She unplugged a machine and poured two bowls of coffee. Then she put the jug under a large cosy. The kitchen was a narrow place with many machines. All the dish towels were printed with coloured pictures and recipes. On the wall there was a cross-reference chart that I thought was an analysis of the hydrogen atom but on closer inspection became herbs. She put croissants, butter and jam on the table beside me. Her hands were elegant, but not so well cared for that she might not have done her own washing-up and sweeping. I bit into one of the croissants while she warmed the milk and checked through a spikeful of bills. I couldn’t decide whether she was wearing a bra.
‘You don’t seem too upset,’ I said.
‘Does that offend you? Ben was a friend of my father’s. I saw him only two or three times a year. He felt it was a duty to see me eat a meal but we had very little to talk about except my parents.’ She flicked some crumbs off her sweater, and gave a sigh of irritation. ‘Messy sluts like me should always wear aprons.’ She turned to me and held her hands up. ‘Look at me, I’ve only been in the kitchen two minutes.’ I looked at her. ‘You don’t have to look at me like that,’ she said. A buzzer on the electric oven sounded and a red light switched on. ‘You’re not really in insurance, are you, Mr …’ She put some ready-cooked pizzas into the oven and reset the timer.
‘Armstrong. No, I’m a leg-man for Sergeant Davis.’ She shook her head; she didn’t believe that either.
‘It was an accident, Mr Armstrong. And quite frankly it was Ben’s fault. He was driving very slowly, he thought he could hear a whining noise in the engine.’
‘People with Bentleys get that way about engines.’
She didn’t encourage my generalizations about people with Bentleys. She probably knew more of them than I did.
She reached over me for a croissant. I watched her in that way she hadn’t liked.
‘The street was dry and the lighting good?’
She swallowed some coffee before answering. ‘Yes to both.’ She paused before adding, ‘Do you always look so worried?’
‘What worries me, Miss Shaw, is the way you are so certain about everything. Usually witnesses are full of maybes, thinks and abouts, but even in that sodium arc lighting you can tell that the truck was maroon. That’s almost psychic.’
‘I am psychic, Mr Armstrong.’
‘Then you’ll know that I was at dinner last night with Mr Toliver. And unless you were hiding under the jelly, he seemed to be unaccompanied.’
She picked up her coffee and became very busy with the spoon, deciding how much sugar she needed. Without looking up she said, ‘I hope you didn’t tell the police that.’
I continued breakfast with a second croissant. She said, ‘It’s a complicated situation – oh, nothing like that. But Ben collected me last night from a friend of mine – a girl friend – I didn’t want to get into all that with the police. I can’t believe there’s any need, is there?’
From time to time she would embrace herself as though she was cold, or needed love or just to make sure her arms were still there. She did it now.
‘There’s probably no need,’ I said.
‘I knew you were nice,’ she said. She took the silk cosy from the silver coffee pot and poured some for me. ‘Things like that … I knew I’d be found out. Even when I was a child I could never tell a lie and get away with it.’
‘What did you do after the car stopped?’
‘Oh, must we go into that?’
‘I think we should, Miss Shaw.’ This time she didn’t tell me to call her Sara.
‘I knew he was in a coma – he wasn’t just dazed or semi-conscious. We’d done first aid at school. He had almost no pulse, and there was the blood.’
‘You sound pretty calm about it.’
‘You feel happier with girls who jump on the table and pull their skirts up –’
‘You bet!’ I said tonelessly.
‘– at the sight of a mouse.’ I was hoping that if she got just a little more angry she’d tell me something worth hearing. She sat back on the seat, kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her chair. She smiled. ‘You push your way in here with some nonsense about insurance companies. You all but call me a liar. You tell me I’m not upset enough, and you litter the place with your second-rate jokes. And all the time I’m not expected to ask you who the hell you are and send you packing.’
‘Ask me.’
‘One of Mr Toliver’s secret little helpers. I know who you are all right.’
I nodded.
‘It’s not as though you are good at it. No wonder it’s all such a mess.’
‘What’s all a mess?’
‘No matter.’ She gave a world-weary sigh.
From the cellar the blond man called, ‘I can’t find the rosé.’
‘Bloody fairies,’ she said. Then she regretted the lapse of composure. ‘I’m coming, Sylvester. I’ll just show my guest to the door.’
I poured a little more coffee for myself. ‘Your coffee is so good,’ I said. ‘I just can’t resist it.’
Her brow furrowed. It must be terrible to be so wellbred that you can’t order a stranger out of your own restaurant.
‘Isn’t it on the bench?’ she called.
‘I’ve looked everywhere,’ the boy insisted.
She got to her feet and hurried down the creaking steps. I heard her speak to the boy as I stepped across to the pantry door. I reached for the dark blue jacket and spread it open on the table. It was an officer’s high-button working uniform. On the breast there was a large slab of ribbons and on its cuffs the rings that denote a kontr-admiral of the Soviet Navy. I flipped the jacket over and bundled it back into the corner. It took only a moment to be ba
ck in my seat again but the beautiful Miss Shaw was at the open door.
‘You found it?’ I asked politely.
‘Yes,’ she said. Her eyes bored into me and I remembered her little joke about being psychic. ‘I almost forgot,’ she said, ‘will you buy a couple of tickets for our play?’
‘What play?’
‘We’re all amateurs but the two leads are awfully good. It will only cost you fifty pence a ticket.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I can’t remember the title. It’s about the Russian revolution – the battleship Potemkin – you must have seen the film. The play’s less political – a love story, really.’ She stood up to hint that I should go away now.
And when this girl hinted she did it with every last gene at the ready. She stood arms akimbo and tossed her head to throw back her loose blonde hair and provide for me the final proof that she was bra-less. ‘I know you think I’m being evasive,’ she said in a soft, gentle, sexy voice.
‘You could say that,’ I agreed.
‘You’re wrong,’ she said, and ran her hand through her hair in a manner more that of a model than the proprietor of a restaurant. Her voice dropped even more as she said, ‘It’s just that I’m not used to being interrogated.’ She came round close behind me but I didn’t turn my head.
‘You do very well for an amateur,’ I said. I didn’t move from my chair.
She smiled and put her hand on my shoulder. I could feel her body as she moved against me. ‘Please,’ she said. How can I convey the sound of the word in her mouth?
‘What are you thinking?’ she said.
‘You want to get me arrested?’
It wasn’t simply her perfume that I could smell now, it was a whole pattern of events, the potatoes she’d peeled, the talc she’d used, the tweed skirt and her body under it. Some other time, some other motive, I might have proved a walkover for her.
I said, ‘I went to a Paris fashion show once. You get in through a scrum of sharp-elbowed lady fashion experts, and they sit you on these toy-sized gilded chairs. From behind the velvet curtains we could all hear the screaming of the fashion models. They were swearing and fighting about mirrors, zips and hairbrushes. Suddenly the lights were lowered to the level of candlelight. There was the muted music of violins and someone pumped Chanel into the air. From the old biddies came only the refined sound made by petite hands in silken gloves.’
‘I don’t get you,’ said Miss Shaw. She moved again.
‘Well, it’s mutual,’ I said. ‘And no one regrets it more than I do.’
‘I mean this fashion show.’
‘It taught me all I ever learned about women.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m not sure.’
From the cellar Sylvester called, ‘Will the Chablis do, Sara?’
‘No it won’t do, you bloody fairy queen,’ she screamed. Sylvester was chalked on the casing, but the bomb-sight was set on me.
I said, ‘I’ve still a lot more questions, I’m afraid.’
‘It will have to wait. I must start the lunches.’
‘Better get it over with.’
She looked at her watch and sighed. ‘You couldn’t have chosen a worse time of day.’
‘I can wait.’
‘Oh Lord! Look, come back for lunch – on the house. We’ll do your questions after.’
‘I have a lunch appointment.’
‘Bring her with you.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘I told you; I’m psychic.’ She consulted a large book. ‘Deux couverts – one o’clock? It will give you time for a drink.’ She uncapped a gold pen. ‘What was the name again?’
‘You make it hard to refuse.’
‘Excellent,’ she said, and fidgeted with the pen.
‘Armstrong.’
‘And I’ll give you your tickets for the play.’ She went to the door. ‘Sylvester!’ she called, ‘what the bloody hell are you doing down there! We’ve got the devil of a lot to do before lunch.’
12
At the discretion of CONTROL game time can be speeded, halted or reversed so that bounds can be replayed with the advantage of hindsight. No appeal can be made except on the grounds that notice in writing was not received before CONTROL’s action.
RULES. ALL GAMES. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
I went up to the Control Balcony when I got back. Schlegel was on the phone. It was still early; I hoped that he hadn’t missed me. ‘Sonofabitch,’ he shouted, and slammed the phone down. I wasn’t dismayed; it was just his manner. He used too much energy for everything he did: I’d seen such activity before in small thickset men like Schlegel. He smacked a fist into his open palm. ‘For Christ’s sake, Patrick. You said an hour.’
‘You know how it is.’
‘Never mind the goddamned apologies. Not content with flying boats, your friend is putting ice-breakers on a converging pattern along the Murmanskiy Bereg. Ice-breakers with sonar buoys … get it? He’ll plot both the subs by taking bearings.’
‘That’s not bad,’ I said admiringly. ‘No one’s thought of that before. Maybe that’s why the Russians keep those two nuclear breakers so far west.’
Schlegel had a lot of hands, and now he threw them at me, so that the index fingers bounced off my shirt. ‘I’ve got two admirals and selected staff from Norfolk running the Blue Control.’ He walked over to the teleprinter, fed out some paper, tore it off, screwed it up and threw it across the room. I said nothing. ‘And your friend Foxwell chooses this moment to demonstrate how well the commies can shaft us.’
He pointed down at the War Table. Plastic discs marked those spots where Ferdy had wiped out nuclear subs. The two replacement subs coming from Iceland and Scotland were moving along the Murmansk coast and would be detected by Ferdy’s buoys.
‘They should have dog-legged those subs nearer to the Pole,’ I said.
‘Where were you when we needed you?’ said Schlegel sarcastically. He picked up his jacket and stood there in his shirtsleeves, his thumb hooking the jacket of his blue chalk-stripe over his shoulder, his fingers grasping his bright red braces. He climbed into his jacket and smoothed the sleeves. That suit was Savile Row, from label to lining, but on Schlegel it was Little Caesar.
‘How do we know that in a real war the Russians wouldn’t be just as nutty?’ I said.
‘And leave the Kara Sea wide open?’ He tightened the knot of his tie.
‘It’s working out OK.’ I looked at the Game Clock, which moved according to the computer-calculated result of each bound. I picked up the pink flimsies that Blue Control had issued, trying to call the destroyed submarines.
‘They just won’t buy it,’ said Schlegel. I noticed that on the electric lights of the tote board they were still shown as undestroyed and in action.
I looked at the Master Status Report. I said, ‘We should programme Ferdy’s ideas, using every last ice-breaker available to the Russians. And we should do it again, giving every ice-breaker sub-killing capability.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ muttered Schlegel. ‘You won’t have to go to the post-mortem with these guys this weekend. When they get back to Norfolk the shit will hit the fan, mark my words.’
‘Aren’t we supposed to be putting up the best defence of the Russian mainland that we can devise?’
‘Where did you get that idea?’ said Schlegel. He had a habit of running his index finger and thumb down his face, as if to wipe away the lines of worry and age. He did it now. ‘The navy comes here for one reason only: they want a print-out that they can take to the Pentagon and make sure the trash haulers don’t steal their appropriations budget.’
‘I suppose,’ I said. Schlegel despised the men of Strategic Air Command, and gladly allied himself with the navy to fight them at any chance he got.
‘You suppose! Ever wonder what a flying gyrene like me is doing over here, running this toy-box? I was the nearest they could get to having a submarine admiral.’ He worked his jaw
as though getting ready to spit but he didn’t. He switched on the intercom again. ‘Phase Eight.’ He watched the Game Clock hands spin round to fourteen thirty hours.
‘Now they’ll have to write off their two subs,’ I said.
‘They’ll tell themselves it’s pack-ice affecting the radio for another Phase yet.’
I said, ‘Well they’ll have one missile-submarine close enough to fire.’
Schlegel said, ‘Can they retarget the MIRVS before launching?’
I said, ‘No, but they can make the independently targeted warheads fall as a cluster.’
‘So it becomes a Multiple Re-entry Vehicle but not independently targeted?’
‘That’s what they call it.’
‘That’s like making a Poseidon back into a horse-and-buggy Polaris.’
‘Not really,’ I said.
‘It’s name rank and number time again, is it?’ said Schlegel. ‘Not really? How much not really? Jesus, I really have to drag information out of you guys.’
‘There’s far more bang per megaton for one thing. Also the clusters are more useful against dispersed targets.’
‘Like silos?’
‘Like silos,’ I said.
‘How does the computer answer that? Against a ten-missile silo, for instance?’
I said, ‘Providing there are no “climate specials” or “programming errors” it usually comes out as one hundred per cent destruction.’
Schlegel smiled. It was all Blue Suite needed to defeat Ferdy, given average luck. And Schlegel in Master Control could provide that.
‘Dandy,’ said Schlegel. I was Schlegel’s assistant and it was my job to brief him with anything he wanted to know. But I had the feeling he had his thumb in the scale for the admirals in Blue Suite, and that made me feel I was letting Ferdy down.
‘I’ll give Ferdy the air reconnaissance of the drift-ice and the water temperatures, shall I?’
Schlegel came close. ‘A word of advice, Patrick. Your friend is under surveillance.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He looked over his shoulder to be sure the door was closed. ‘I mean he’s under surveillance. Security, right?’
‘Aren’t we all? Why are you telling me?’