"How bad would the damage be?"
"We'd survive." He said it without much fervour. "The longer-term damage would be to unemployment. If all Kassouli's jobs went to Germany or Ireland or Spain, we'd never see them again. And most of them are in just the kind of sunrise industry we need to encourage."
"So he could hurt us?" I insisted.
"Embarrass," he insisted.
"So what do I do?"
The Honourable John grimaced with a politician's dislike of a direct question which needed a straight answer. "I really can't say," he said primly. "I'm merely a humble back-bencher, am I not?"
"For Christ's sake, John. You've been briefed on this! Just as soon as I telephoned you trotted round to the Department of Industry or whatever honey-pot has got the problem and told them what I told you!"
"I might have mentioned it to the Permanent Secretary," he allowed cautiously. The real truth was that HMG had moved with the speed of a scalded cat; partly because they were terrified of Kassouli, and even more terrified that I'd spill the whole rotting can of worms into Fleet Street's lap.
"So what do I do?" I insisted.
He swirled the white wine around in his glass, trying to look judicious. "What do you feel is best, Nick?"
"I'd hardly be coming to ask for your help if I knew what to do, would I? I've got some madman threatening economic warfare against Britain unless I help turn Anthony Bannister into fish food. Wouldn't you say that was a matter for government, rather than me?"
"Fish food?" The Honourable John could be wonderfully obtuse when he wanted to be.
"They want me to turn out his lights, John. Switch him off. Banjo him. Kill the fucker."
He looked immensely pained. "Did Kassouli say as much?"
"Not exactly, but I can't think what the hell else he wanted. I'm supposed to steer the good ship Lollipop straight to point X on the chart. What do you think is going to be waiting for us? Mermaids?"
"I shall really have to insist that I've heard no implications of murder. So far as I know, all Kassouli wishes to do is deny Bannister the chance of winning the St Pierre."
"Don't be pompous, John. The bastard's up to no good. You want me to go and squeal this tale down Fleet Street? Someone will listen to me. I've got a fragment of bronze that will insure that."
"They'll listen only too avidly, I fear. Nothing excites the press so much as a chance to damage our relationship with the United States." He stared at me helplessly.
"Then for Christ's sake, reassure me! Tell me the Government's on top of this problem. Don't you have friends in Washington who can tell Kassouli to rewire his brain?"
"Not with the amounts of money he contributes to members of Congress, no." He shrugged. "And you forget that Kassouli has never made these threats openly. They have been—how shall we say?—hinted at. Usually by intermediaries like yourself. Kassouli naturally denies making such threats, nevertheless HMG is forced to take them seriously,"
"Then give him his Goddamned enquiry! Why ever not?"
"Because counter to the squallings of the left-wing press,
Nick, HMG do not actually control the judiciary. A new inquest can only be instituted if there are fresh revelations of fact. There are not. So we must look to you—"
"Hold it!" I said. "Here's a revelation of fact. I'm not going to help Kassouli, because I don't fancy joining my father in jail. What I'm going to do is go back to Devon and, if Bannister's bloody mistress hasn't stolen my boat, I'm going to tow it off to a nice safe place where I shall rig it. Meanwhile you'll be losing lots of jobs, but don't blame me, I've done my bit for the country and I've got a fucked-up spine to prove it. And you can tell Melissa not to try and find me before I sail, because I'll have disappeared. The kids' school fees are in the bank, and there isn't any more money, so it isn't worth her looking. Will you tell her that, John? Tell her I'm up a bloody creek and bankrupt."
"Nick, Nick, Nick!" The Honourable John held up a pained hand. "Of course we're not asking you to adopt responsibility for this situation."
"You're not?"
He waved away a waiter. "I repeat that I am not a member of Her Majesty's Government..."
"...yet."
"But I think I can fairly reflect what the Government is thinking. Frankly, Nick, we'd rather Mr Kassouli did not press his threats against us. I think that's a fair stance, and a sensible one. But, as I said, the threats have not been made openly and we need to know a great deal more about their nature. Your information is valuable, but we'd like more. Is it a real threat, for example? Do I make myself clear?"
"The answer to your first question is yes; to the second, no."
He wouldn't look at me. "What I think I'm saying is that HMG would be most grateful, most grateful indeed, if you were to keep us informed of Mr Kassouli's intentions. Nothing more, Nick. Just information."
"How grateful would HMG be?" I mimicked his pronunciation.
He gave a small laugh. "I don't think we're talking about fiscal remuneration, Nick. Shall we just agree that we would silently note and privately approve your patriotism?"
"Jesus bloody wept." I waited till he looked at me. "You want me to go along with Kassouli, don't you?"
"We want you to keep us informed. Through me, though naturally I shall deny this request was ever formally made. It's entirely unofficial."
"But the only way I can keep an eye on Kassouli is by going along with his plans, isn't it? So I do help him, and HMG will be very grateful in the most nebulous and undeniable manner. Is that it?"
The Honourable John thought about his answer for some time, but finally nodded. "Yes, I think that is it. And you do want your boat back, don't you? This would seem to effect that desideratum."
It was all so very delicate. Kassouli justified revenge as righteous anger. The Honourable John was making it a case of expediency. And I was to be the instrument. "Why don't I just go to the police?" I asked.
He gave me a very small, very tight smile. "Because you would discover that the matter was beyond their competence."
"Meaning HMG put it there?"
"Indeed."
I thought of Harry Abbott; always so close to me, nudging me away from trouble like an escort ship taking a merchantman past a minefield. Except Abbott's job, I suddenly realized, was to steer Bannister into the mines. "God, but you're a slimy lot." I stared at him. "Do you think Bannister murdered his wife?"
"I think it would be unscrupulous to make any conjecture."
"If you want him dead," I said brutally, "why don't you use your thugs to do it? Or are you telling me that those chaps who used to disappear from my regiment went into monasteries?"
"Our thugs," he said in a pained voice, "don't have boats on Bannister's lawn, nor the honour of Bannister's acquaintance."
"You could introduce them," I said helpfully. "I thought Bannister was a friend of yours?"
"Rather more of Melissa's, I think." He did not look up at me as he spoke.
Poor sod, I thought. "Really? I never got that impression."
He tried to hide his relief, but couldn't. "Not that they're especially close, I think, but she has more time for a social life than I do."
More time to slide in and out of bed, he meant. Both the Hon-John and I wore Melissa's horns. "So HMG," I said instead, "would be jolly grateful if I helped knock off Melissa's friend Tony, and you're telling me, in the slimiest and most roundabout manner possible, that the police will turn a blind eye."
"You may put whatever construction you choose upon my words, Nick, and once again I entirely deny any imputation of a conspiracy to murder. All I am prepared to say, and that unofficially, is that we would like you to be helpful to a most important industrialist who could bring a great deal more investment and many more jobs to Britain."
"Is that what Kassouli promised you if you turned a blind eye? Jobs?"
That made him twitch. "Don't be ridiculous, Nick."
"The man's as mad as a hatter, John. He talks about unquiet so
uls. He's probably chatting to his daughter on a planchette board, or through some half-mad fucking spiritualist!"
"Was madness an occupational risk of hatters? I don't know." He looked at his watch. "Good Lord. Is that the time? And Nick?"
"John?"
"Not a word to the press, there's a very good chap."
He paid and left me. I had gone to the Government for help, and I'd been abandoned. So I did the one thing they did not want me to do. I phoned Fleet Street.
The pub was dingy, smelly and, compared to the Devon pubs, expensive, but it was close to the newspaper offices which was why Micky Harding had suggested it. Harding had been one of the reporters who had marched every step of the Falklands with my battalion which, inevitably, had nicknamed him 'Mouse'.
Mouse now brought four pints of ale to the table. Two for each of us. "You look bloody horrible, Nick."
"Thank you."
"Never thought I'd see you again."
"You could have visited me in hospital." "Don't be so fucking daft. I spent bloody hours outside your door, didn't I? But you were being coy. What's the matter? Do we wear the wrong perfume for you? Cheers." He downed the best part of his first pint. "Saw your ugly face in the papers. Who beat you up?"
"Friend of Anthony Bannister's. South African."
"Well, well, well." He looked at me with interest, sensing a story.
"But you can't say that," I said hastily, "because if you do I lose my boat."
He closed his eyes, clicked his fingers irritably, then gave me a look of triumph. "Sycorax, right?"
"Right."
"Three bloody years and I haven't forgotten." I remembered how Micky prided himself on his memory. "God," he went on, "but you were boring about that bloody boat. Still afloat, is it?"
"Only just."
"How come you lose her if I say that you were beaten up by a mate of Bannister's?"
"Because I need Bannister's money to repair it."
Micky gave me a long and disbelieving look. "If I recall correctly, which I bloody well do, us taxpayers gave a hundred thousand quid to everyone who got badly wounded in the Falklands. Didn't you qualify?"
"I got stitched up by a divorce lawyer."
"Bloody hellfire. A hundred grand?"
"Damn nearly."
"Jesus, mate. You need a bloody nanny, not a newspaper reporter. So tell me all."
I told him about Sycorax. I also told him about Bannister, Jill-Beth, Kassouli and the Honourable John. I told him everything. I told him how I had let myself be suckered into Kassouli's house and how, as a result, I now had a problem. I wanted to head Kassouli off, not because I was on Bannister's side, but because it was impossible to do nothing when so many jobs were threatened. It had become a matter of patriotism. Micky grimaced when I used the word. "So why don't you just play shtum?" he asked. "Clearly the fucking Government's happy for Bannister to get knocked over, the jobs get saved, and you keep your boat. What do you need me for?"
"Because there's no proof that Bannister did kill his wife."
"Oh. You want to be honourable as well, do you?" He said it in friendly mockery, then lit a cigarette and stared at the smoke-stained ceiling. He was a big man with a coarse tongue and a battered face and a mind like a suspicious weasel. He gave me an overwhelming impression of world-weariness; that he had seen everything, heard everything, and believed very little of any of it. Now he looked dubious. "It's the word of a convict's son versus the British Government and one of the world's richest men?"
"That's about it."
"The VC will help, of course—" he thought about it some more—"but Kassouli will deny talking to you?"
"Utterly."
"And the Government will say they never heard of you?"
"I'm sure."
"Dodgy." He went silent again for a few puffs of his cigarette. "Do you think there's a chance Bannister did it?"
"I haven't the first idea, Mouse. That's the whole point about a perfect murder. It's so perfect you don't even know if it was murder."
"But if we say it was murder, Nick, or if we even bloody hint at it, Bannister will slap a bloody libel writ on us, won't he?"
"Would he?"
"Of course he would. Worth hundreds of thousands, that libel. Tax-free, too." He shook his head. "It just can't be proved that he murdered his wife, can it?"
"No."
"It would be the perfect bloody murder." He said it admiringly. "And a damn sight cheaper than divorce." He lit another cigarette. "I want it. It's a lovely little tale. A stinking rich Yank with a wog name, a murdering Brit bastard, a pusillanimous government, a copper-bottomed war hero, and a corpse with big tits. Just right for a scummy lowlife rag like mine. Cheers, Nick."
"So can you help?" I felt the relief of a weight being lifted, the relief that I was no longer alone between the rock and a hard place. If the British Government would not take on Kassouli's obsession, then the press certainly would. Kassouli's threats would disappear in the face of publicity, for he would surely not dare acknowledge that he was trying to blackmail a government or plan revenge on the high seas. I would let the newspapers stir up the sludge and make a huge stench. The stench might even give Kassouli what he wanted; another enquiry into Nadeznha's death. The stench would also release me from the whole mess. I had wanted help, and now I had it from the very people I'd been avoiding for over two years.
"I'll help," Micky said grimly, "but I need proof." He wrinkled his face as he thought. "This Jill-Beth Kirov-like-the-fucking-ballet. She's coming back to talk to you?"
"She said so. But I'm planning to move my boat tomorrow. I'm not going to be around to be talked to."
"You have to move the boat?"
"Bloody hell, yes. Bannister's threatening to repossess it, and I've had enough."
"No." Micky shook his head. "No, no, no. Won't do, Nick. You'll have to stay there." He saw my unwilling expression, and sighed. "Look, mate. If you're not there, then the American girl won't talk to you. If she doesn't talk to you, then we haven't got any proof. And if I haven't got proof then we don't have a story. Not a bloody dicky-bird."
"But how does her talking to me provide proof?"
"Because I'll wire you, you dumb hero. A radio mike under your shirt, an aerial down your underpants, and your Uncle Micky listening in with a tape-recorder."
"Can you do that?"
"Sure I can do it. I have to get the boss's permission, but we do it all the time. How do you think we find all those bent coppers and kinky clergymen? But what you have to do, Nick, is go along with it all, understand? Tell Bannister you'd love to navigate his bloody boat. Tell Kassouli you're itching to help him trap Bannister. String them along!"
"But I don't want to stay at Bannister's," I said unhappily.
"In fact I've already told them I'm through with their damned film."
"Then bloody un-tell them. Eat crow. Say you were wrong." He was insistent and persuasive; all his world-weariness sloughing away in his eagerness for the story. "You're doing it for Queen and Country, Nick. You're saving jobs. You're staving off some Yankee nastiness. It won't be forever, anyway. How long before this American bint turns up with the hundred thousand?"
"I don't know."
"Within a month, I'll wager. So, are you game?"
Bannister had not been able to persuade me to stay on to be filmed, nor had Kassouli, nor even the Honourable John, but Micky had done it easily. I said I'd stay. But only till the story broke, and after that I would rid myself of all the rich men into whose squabble I had been unwillingly drawn. "Of course we'll pay you for the story," Micky said.
"I don't want money for it."
He shook his head. "You are a berk, Nick, you are a real berk."
But I was no longer alone.
I took the train to Devon next morning. It was raining. Wildtrack had left the river, either gone back to the Hamble marina or else to her training runs. Mystique had also disappeared; probably reclaimed by an angry French charter firm.
But Sycorax was still at my wharf. I had half expected to find her missing, but she was safe and I felt an immense relief.
I limped down to her and climbed into her cockpit. I saw that Jimmy had bolted the portside chainplates into position, ready for the main and mizzen shrouds. I unlocked the cabin padlock and swung myself over the washboards. I lifted the companionway and found the gun still in its hiding place under the engine. If Mulder had been willing to search Mystique, I wondered, why not Sycorax?
I went topsides, but there was no sign of Jimmy. Nothing moved on the river except the small pits of rain. I had the tiredness of time zones, of being dragged by jets through the hours of sleep. I slapped Sycorax's coachroof and told her we'd be off soon, that there was not much longer to stay on this river, only so long as it took to trap a coterie of the world's wealthy people.
There was no beer on board Sycorax, nor anything to eat, so I trudged up to the house only to find that the housekeeper was out. I knew where she kept a spare house key, so I let myself in and helped myself to beer, bread and cheese from the kitchen. I ate the meal in the big lounge from where I stared out at the rain falling on the river. A grockle barge chugged upstream and I saw the tourists' faces pressed against the glass as they stared up at Bannister's big house. Their guide would be telling them that this was where the famous Tony Bannister lived, but in a few weeks, I thought, the newspaper's scandalous stories would bring yet more people to gape at the lavish house. I supposed the grockle barges must have done good business during my father's trial.
The sound of the front door slamming echoed through the house. I turned, expecting to hear the housekeeper go towards the kitchen, but instead it was Angela Westmacott who came into the lounge. She stopped, apparently surprised at seeing me.
"Good afternoon," I said politely.
"I thought you'd resigned," she said acidly.
"I thought we might talk about it," I said.
"Meaning you need the money?" She was carrying armfuls of shopping which she dropped on to a sofa before stripping off her wet raincoat. "So are you making the film or not?" she demanded.