Half a Crown (34 page)

He made it back to the Duke’s Head before five without incident. He stopped in the railway station and bought a bunch of daffodils for Breda. The flower girl looked tired, and so did her flowers, but she gave a real smile when Carmichael paid with half a crown and waved away the change. It must be a terrible life, he thought, coming up from the country on the early train with a bucket of bouquets and standing on the station forecourt all day trying to sell them until they were all gone and you could go home.

Breda tutted at the flowers, but she turned from the stove to put them into a Dutch vase immediately. Their yellow trumpets cheered the kitchen, which was in a half-basement, like Carmichael’s hotel room, and consequently rather dark. A pair of cats were curling around Breda’s feet, meowing.

“Loy will be down in a minute, Jimmy that is,” she said. “Get your legs under the table.” She put down some food for the cats.

“Loy. That would be Aloysius? I knew a Loy once,” Carmichael said, sitting down obediently. “Years ago. Part of a case. He’s dead, though. Is it a common name in Ireland?”

“Not as common as Jimmy,” Breda said, her eyes crinkling. “This Loy’s dead too, in a way. He’s been to see his own tombstone, he says it’s very fine.”

“How did that happen?” Carmichael asked, intrigued, but just then the man himself came into the kitchen.

Loy was in his forties, tall and athletic and tanned, although it was April. His dark hair was graying at the temples. Carmichael would have known him for an Irishman anywhere, and he looked as if he was a devil for women. He looked nothing like the other Loy. “I’m Jimmy,” he said, putting out his hand and looking assessingly at Carmichael.

The name on Carmichael’s false identity card was Walter Sprange, but he felt sure Breda would have let slip his real name, as she had Loy’s. “Carmichael,” he said.

“You don’t have a first name?” Loy asked, shaking his hand.

“I do, and it’s Peter, but nobody calls me by it. I go by Carmichael.” He would never again hear Jack call him P. A.

Loy nodded, and sat. One of the cats jumped up on his lap and he petted it absently. “Beer?” Breda asked, from the sink. “Drop of whisky?”

“Maybe later,” Loy said, and Carmichael echoed him. “So, I hear you might have need to get to the Republic in a hurry?”

“I might,” Carmichael said. “First I have to find my niece. She’s somewhere that should be safe, but I don’t know where.”

“Well, in any case nobody’s getting in or out of London before Thursday. It’s clamped down tighter than a nun’s habit, excuse me, Breda.”

Breda laughed, and began to serve them an Irish stew.

Loy pushed the cat down to the floor. “If I’m still at liberty on Thursday, and if you’ve found your niece, I’ll be heading back to Ireland on a boat I have at Swansea. A thousand pounds each, and guaranteed I get you into the Republic without any checks at either end.”

“A boat?” Carmichael asked. “A yacht?”

Loy laughed. Breda set down a loaf of soda bread and sat down at the third place laid at the table. “A motor boat,” she said. “A fine grand one from Denmark, isn’t it, Jimmy?”

“That’s right,” Loy said.

“Goes everywhere in it. All the way to North Africa.” That explained the tan, Carmichael thought. What could he be smuggling from North Africa?

“You want me to say grace, Breda?” Loy asked.

“If you please,” she said.

Carmichael put down his spoon. The stew smelled meaty and delicious. Loy gave a blessing in Latin. He and Breda joined in on the amen. For a while they gave their attention to the food. “This is excellent,” Carmichael said to Breda. “Did you make the bread yourself too?”

“I have to, you can’t get decent soda bread in this city,” she said.

“So what’s kept you here all this time?” Loy asked, mockingly.

“You know that,” she said. “We’d have been away to Ireland years back if not for helping Carmichael and his poor deportees. The stories I’ve heard! They’re families, lots of them. I couldn’t turn my back on that, not and sleep at night.”

“You’re a good woman, Breda,” Loy said.

“He’s absolutely right,” Carmichael agreed. “There are too many people who do turn their backs on it and seem to sleep perfectly comfortably.”

“It looks as if they’re waking up a bit,” Loy said. “All these protests around the country—and spreading to France now. People are starting to think about it, about what they’ve let go on in the name of safety.”

“I really hope so,” Carmichael said. One of the cats brushed against his leg under the table.

“How many have you got away all together?” Loy asked.

“I don’t know,” Carmichael answered shortly.

“No, how many? Thousands? Tens of thousands?”

“Thousands this year alone,” Carmichael said. “Tens of thousands over time.”

“It’s funny, I thought Ireland would go the way of all the rest,” Loy said. “But no, she walks her own road, priest-ridden and superstitious and corrupt, more authoritarian and leader-worshiping than I’d like, but at least steering a course away from all this madness of Jew-hating and murder. They don’t exactly have an easy life in the Republic once they get there, you understand. There have been pogroms against them from time to time, and it’s hard for them to find work that’s not scrubbing floors. But at least nobody’s putting them into cattle cars or taking them to gas chambers, and they’re grateful enough for it.”

“There’s nowhere better to send them,” Carmichael said, spooning up his stew. “Well, there might be.” He wasn’t going to discuss Abby, whose organization was entirely separate, and so far quite safe from anyone’s betrayals. “We’ll see.”

“Sometimes I get one or two of them into Palestine,” Loy said. “It’s risky, though.”

“It would be,” Carmichael agreed blandly, but his respect for Loy increased. The Palestine Mandate was under firm British control, and the policy not to allow any more Jews in was very strict.

“So all the time you’ve been the visible face of repression, you’ve been trying to alleviate excesses under the table?” Loy asked.

“Something like that,” Carmichael said, awkwardly.

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Loy said.

“So what brings you to London, Jimmy?” Carmichael asked, to change the subject.

“Bit of unfinished business,” Loy said, looking cagey. “Years ago a friend and I tried something, and it didn’t come off and he was killed. Now I have a chance to try it again and make it work this time. He’d have wanted that.”

“This is the friend who’s buried under Jimmy’s real name,” Breda put in.

“His girlfriend identified him as me. I don’t know to this day if
she did it to give me a chance to get away, because they weren’t looking for anyone else, or if she did it because she was completely out of her head.” Loy shook his head incredulously.

Carmichael found himself remembering the
Hamlet
bomb, and Viola Lark identifying the bomber’s body as Sir Aloysius Farrell, her face rigid, her voice high, acting madness or really mad, walking a line he didn’t understand, quoting from the play and admitting her guilt at the same moment. She had identified Loy’s body while saying something about putting gold coins on his eyes. It was too much of a coincidence. “That wouldn’t be Viola Lark, would it?” he asked.

Loy shot him a sideways glance full of cautious menace. His hands disappeared underneath the table. “How do you know that?”

“Now, Loy …,” Breda said, reproachfully.

“Just a guess,” Carmichael said, evenly, keeping both of his own hands in sight.

“You were there, weren’t you? You were the one who saved them.” Loy didn’t relax at all.

“It didn’t hit me until afterwards that I should have just sat still and let it happen,” Carmichael said, laying down his spoon beside his empty plate. “Though I’m not sure it would have done as much good as you thought it would, not then. It was too late. Everyone was already afraid. There wasn’t any swell of protest against the government then, almost everyone was behind them. Normanby would have been replaced by Lord Eversley or someone else just as bad.”

“You have to try,” Loy said, one of his hands emerging and scraping up the last of his stew.

“And you’re trying it again?” Carmichael asked.

“Not a bomb this time. I’m going to shoot them as they come through the streets,” he said, with his mouth full but not taking his eyes off Carmichael.

“Ah. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to take you up on your offer of transport to Ireland, then. They’ve taken excellent precautions against snipers.”

“Do you know what they are?” Loy asked.

“I’ve seen the plans,” Carmichael said, cautiously. “More useful than that, I know the order of the procession. Where were you hoping to do it from?”

“A rooftop on Whitehall,” Loy said.

“I don’t want to hear this,” Breda said, getting up. Both cats immediately began to curl around her feet. “You know I don’t hold with it.”

“Not even Hitler?” Loy asked. “You know it’s Hitler we’re talking about. You wouldn’t even kill him?”

“No,” Breda said, tight-lipped. “Oh, he’s a bad man all right, but what good would it do?”

“What would you do with him then?” Carmichael asked, curiously.

“You could marry him, and love him and try to teach him better,” Breda said.

The two men laughed. “It must be nearly opening time anyway,” Loy said. “We’ll get ourselves out from under your feet. I’ll be back later to sleep, is that all right?”

“Thank you for the dinner, it was delicious,” Carmichael said, rising.

Loy looked at him cautiously. “Like to take a walk?” he asked.

“Certainly,” Carmichael said.

Outside, they both turned their feet towards Waterloo Bridge. The businessmen were walking back across the bridge to take trains back home to Dorking and Leatherhead. A little wind had come up and was tossing their ties merrily over their shoulders. Nobody was walking north, except Carmichael and Loy, going against the flow. “Marry him,” Loy said, and laughed again.

Carmichael shook his head, smiling. “Women.”

Loy stopped about halfway across and leaned on the rail. There was a fine view looking east towards Saint Paul’s and the Tower. Looking west, past the stream of cars crossing the bridge, lay the Palace of Westminster. Loy took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them to Carmichael.

“No thanks,” he said. “I never smoke.” Jack didn’t like the smell. He swallowed.

“Well, if I’m going to shoot rather than marry, we’re inside the security perimeter,” Loy said, quietly.

“You’ve got a rifle?” Carmichael asked, hardly above a whisper. The businessmen passing them did not stop, or pay any attention to them.

Loy nodded, jerking his head back in the direction of the Duke’s Head.

“And you’re good?”

“I was a sharpshooter in the army,” he said.

“The British army?” Carmichael asked, and then remembered. “Of course the British army, I remember. You’re the hero of Calais.”

“I was,” Loy said, and tossed the butt of his cigarette down over the rail. His eyes stayed on it as it spiraled downwards. “For all the bloody good it does me. There’s no place for old heroes in this world. But you can trust me that I’m a good shot.”

“The Queen will go first, after the police motorcycles,” Carmichael said. “She’ll be in the Royal Coach, the one that looks like a pumpkin. Then Hitler, in an open coach draped with swastikas. Then Normanby, in another antique coach. Another open one, because of the wheelchair.”

“Alone?” Loy asked quickly.

“Yes. I don’t know about Hitler. He’s almost never alone, and
he’s an old man now. But Normanby will be alone, except for the driver.”

“Who comes next?” Loy had turned his back on the river and was looking over at Westminster.

“The Japanese. Don’t shoot them, for heaven’s sake, it would probably start a war.”

“If there are sniper precautions, I’ll probably only get one shot. I don’t know if it should be Hitler or Normanby. I’ve been waiting to get another chance at Hitler.”

“Normanby,” Carmichael said, without even stopping to think. “As to the sniper precautions, they’re putting men on rooftops. But that could be a good thing, if they think you’re one of them. If you dress in camo and act as if you have a right to be there, they’ll probably ignore you until it’s too late. They’re going to be on a lot of those rooftops.”

“Is there a password, in case one of them tries to come onto my roof?” Loy asked.

“There will be, but I don’t know it. It will be tomorrow’s watchword, and they’re issued daily.”

“Can you get it?” Loy asked, lighting another cigarette. “Who issues it?”

“My secretary does. Or—I don’t know, I expect she’ll keep doing it for the time being. If she’s still all right.” Carmichael thought of poor Peg Duthie and her loyalty and bad typing. He hoped they didn’t sack her, or worse, think she was complicit in what they’d call his treason. “They’re bound to question her, but she doesn’t know anything at all. No. I suppose she’d give it to me, but it would be too dangerous even to try.”

“To you or to her?” Loy asked.

“To her,” Carmichael said. “She changes it every day, first thing in the morning. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize her.”

“Do you have a recent password?” Loy asked, uninterested in Miss Duthie’s fate.

“Yesterday’s was
hammock,”
Carmichael said. “But it won’t do you any good.”

“Hammock?”
Loy asked, incredulously, and began to laugh. “It’s all so childish, isn’t it?” he said. “Look at these poor sods walking over this bridge to get their trains home to their nice little suburbs and their nice little wives, as if they didn’t have less freedom this year than last year and everything wasn’t closing in on them. Do they realize how thin a line they’re walking?”

“I don’t think so,” Carmichael said. “Look at them. They just go straight ahead, not looking up or down. They worry about Frank’s new girlfriend and Emily’s bad school report and if they’re putting on weight and whether their wife’s being unfaithful, while all the safety nets are cut away around them. Then something frightens them, and they look up and realize they’re tightrope-walking over an abyss.”

“You’d have liked my friend Devlin,” Loy said. “He used to talk like that.”