‘For Christ’s sake, Eddie. Just tell me!’
‘Ashby de la
Zouche.
Not bad, eh?’
Clark clearly was not getting the message. Troy turned around in search of Tosca, but she had gone downstairs.
‘You cracked it. Well done. Now just tell me what it says.’
But he knew what it would say. Knew it at its worst.
‘Cockerell was a double agent, sir. I doubt he had the brains to work out exactly what that meant, but the people running him did. They were using him as a courier to channel information
out of Britain and money in. They bounced him all over Europe—Paris, Milan, Lisbon. You name it. He was recruited by a man called Charles Leigh-Hunt in the summer of 1951 on a trip to London,
ostensibly to visit the Festival of Britain. Says Leigh-Hunt’s MI6, and that he’d known him in the war, but I have no real confidence in Mr Cockerell on matters like that. Could be a
fake name, could be a line they spun him. But there’s no doubt about who was his immediate control—would you believe our old friend Inspector Cobb?’
‘Yes,’ said Troy. ‘I would.’
‘Then there’s a list of seven names of agents Cockerell claimed to have on his payroll. Earl, John—Smith, Alan—Harwood, Antony—’
‘Don’t recite the lot. Just give me what’s important. The big fish, not the sprats.’
Clark paused, as though Troy had set him a dilemma.
‘Well, sir. There’s only one other big fish as you put it. The courier the Russians sent. He records every meeting, every date, every place, but then he says she always used a
different name, so he doesn’t bother to record them, as they’ll all be phoney.’
Clark paused again. Troy could hear his own heart beat.
‘But he does describe her.’
Again silence. Troy not wanting to break into it, for fear of what must follow.
‘I will say, sir, it sounds familiar.’
‘Does it?’
‘About five foot tall, close-cropped hair, although the colour varies from blonde to ginger, built like Jane Russell, bit of a looker, and what Cockerell calls an “irritating
American accent”. But, sir, and here’s the clincher, “always clutching a copy of
Huckleberry Finn
”. Now, sir, who does that sound like to you?’
He wanted so much to be able to see her. He wanted to look into her eyes. He wanted to fling her “we’re safe” back in her face in all its overconfident stupidity. Why had she
chosen now to wander off? Now—when the lies she had constructed were about to come crashing down like crazy paving.
‘Eddie, do you still live in the Police House?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘Don’t go back there. Watch your back all the way home. Check into a hotel. Go to the Ritz, give them my name. There’ll be a room for you. She’ll meet you
there.’
‘I don’t quite follow, sir.’
But he didn’t ask who Troy meant by ‘she’.
‘There’s been another murder. Someone Cobb mistook for me.’
‘Bloody hell.’
Troy went downstairs to the sitting room. Tosca was sitting in one armchair. Foxx in the other. Like hell’s bookends. Foxx was the new Foxx—the Dior suit, the good shoes—the
matching pink luggage in a heap between the two chairs. Tosca was the old Tosca, wishing looks could kill.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘looks like we caught you suckertush, doesn’t it?’
She crossed her legs, let her foot swing, a metronome of her own impatience. Foxx looked at him. Baffled and not far short of angry.
‘You gonna explain, or what?’ said Tosca.
Troy seized her by the hand, dragged her into the kitchen and kicked the door shut. He didn’t see the fist that came flying at him, and a direct hit to the jaw knocked him off-balance. He
deflected the second blow, and the third went wild, colliding with a saucepan. She bruised her knuckles and yelled in pain.
Troy slipped in and slammed her back against the wall.
‘You bastard,’ she hissed. ‘You complete fuckin’ bastard. You couldn’t wait for me could you? You couldn’t fuckin’ wait! I mean was that a lot to ask?
Just to wait for me!’
He took her by the jaw, tilted her head and levelled her eyes on his. Her feet still kicked, but the hands stopped flailing.
‘Shut up. Shut up and listen to me. Whatever’s running through your mind, whatever it is you think I’ve done to you there’s something more important.’
Tosca managed an ‘Oh yeah?’ through pursed lips.
‘They killed a man last night.’
‘They?’
‘Them. The people you were dealing with.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Right here. On the doorstep.’
Her eyes widened. He felt her body slacken and knew the fight had gone out of her.
‘They thought he was me.’
‘Oh God. Oh Jesus. Oh God save us.’
He let go. She slithered to the floor, wrapped her arms about herself and he saw tears forming in her eyes.
He squatted down to her level.
‘Who was he? This guy they thought was you?’
‘An old friend. You might have heard me mention him. Johnny Fermanagh.’
‘And this guy looked like you?’
‘A bit. Well, a lot.’
She leant her head against his thigh and groaned.
‘Whatdafuckaweegonnadooo?’
He stretched out a hand to her head and ruffled her hair, picked out the cobwebs she had gathered slithering down the wall.
‘Exactly what I tell you.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘You take Shirley. You check into the Ritz. You take three rooms.’
‘Who’s the third one for?’
‘My sergeant. He’ll get in touch with you in a couple of hours.’
‘How will I know him?’
‘He’s an old friend—Edwin Clark.’
Her head shot up so fast he thought she’d crick her neck, and her eyes were the size of saucers.
‘Edwin? Edwin? You mean fat little Eddie Clark from Berlin? Sweet little Swifty who did that nice line in women’s underwear and black-market coffee? The guy who got me my black
strapless Schiaparelli?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s your sergeant?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jeezus! Jeezus, Troy. Why didn’t you tell me about Clark? He knows me, he knows me! You could have told me, you could have fuckin’ told me!’
‘It doesn’t matter. It would only have alarmed you. Besides, he’s one of us now.’
‘Us? Us? Troy, I don’t even know the word!’
‘Leave a message at the desk telling him which room you’re in. Lie low and do nothing till you hear from me. Now—get your shoes and coat. You haven’t time to
pack.’
He opened the kitchen door, and she ran for the stairs. Foxx was standing by the fire, with her back to him. She turned and slapped another large brown envelope against his chest.
‘When I said you were married, you told me you didn’t live together any more.’
‘We didn’t, or I didn’t think we did,’ Troy said, not wholly sure what the truth was.
‘But here she is, and here am I.’
‘And you’ll be together a little longer.’
‘Are we in trouble?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was prepared for that. I don’t think I was prepared for a wife.’
Troy put the two women in a cab, and went back to the house. He took the little golden gun from his coat pocket, pushed off the safety and racked a bullet into the chamber. He
put the gun on the table next to the telephone. The tools of the trade. One or other had to get him out of this.
Time was he and Charlie would discuss every aspect of their lives. Once, the best part of twenty years ago, Charlie had rung him and said ‘I’m engaged. Talk me out of it.’ Troy
had. And he had never even learnt the unfortunate woman’s name. But to call him, and square off, to call him and draw a line in the sand, to call him and be willing to go as far as
blackmail—that he had never done, and he had no idea how to set about it. With any luck Charlie would call him. ‘We’re in a mess Freddie, let’s get out of it.’ Time
was, Charlie could talk his way out of anything.
Half an hour had passed, and he had not reached for the phone. It rang first. He picked it up. If it was Charlie, so be it.
‘Troy? It’s me—Foxx. I’m at the Ritz. Something happened. We took the taxi to King’s Cross. Larissa gave the driver new instructions after we’d set off. Not
the Ritz. She said it was dumb to go straight to the Ritz. “Trust me,” she said. “I’m a pro.” She said she’d been followed before. She knew how to shake off a
trail. We changed taxis at King’s Cross. I flagged it down. She was behind me, paying the first taxi. She dropped her handbag, and when I turned round she’d vanished. The bag was still
there, lying on the ground, but she’d gone, Troy. She’d just gone. I waited for more than ten minutes, but she’d vanished into thin air! Vanished, Troy. Just …
vanished!’
It had been years since he had last been in Edwardes Square. He had always thought it beautiful, in its sylvan way, but he had never found any reason to go there and enough of
a reason not to. One thing had changed. There was now no Special Branch plod outside number 52. There was now no need for him to lurk in the shadows. He parked the Bentley outside Mrs Edge’s
door and yanked on the bell pull.
‘You’re late,’ she said as she saw him framed in the doorway.
Troy looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea of the time.’
‘I meant late in the lifetime of your favour, Mr Troy. Not the hour. However, I’ve been expecting you these ten years. Do come in.’
She pushed the door to and drew a heavy curtain across it, locking out the night.
‘Almost autumn, you know. Mists and mellow fruitfulness, to say nothing of cold draughts and rising damp.’
He followed her down the hall and into an overheated sitting room at the back of the house.
‘I retire at Christmas. If you had not come soon, you would never have been able to collect what you’re owed.’
‘I wasn’t thinking in those terms.’
‘Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.’
She sat down in a high armchair next to a hissing gas fire. Troy had the vaguest memory of a yappy lapdog, but a fat tabby cat occupied pride of place on the hearthrug, opened one eye as Troy
approached, and did not stir from its place in the artificial sun. A game of patience was set out before her on a low, green baize card table, the latest novel of Kingsley Amis spread open on the
footstool. Time had not been kind to Muriel Edge. The lines around her myopic eyes had sunk into Audenesque canyons. The high chair was clearly intended to cater to the onset of arthritis and an
inability to bend without pain. The disease had locked her fingers like claws, bent and angular, the knuckles swollen to the size of conkers. The very shape bespoke pain to Troy.
‘I should have gone in the spring, at sixty. But when Dick White went off to run the other show, the new chap asked me to stay on. See the section through the handover, as it were. I was
only too glad, retirement will bore me into an early grave. God knows, I can hardly while away the time writing a memoir, now can I?’
She waved Troy into the chair opposite with a crooked hand.
‘Now, tell me what you want. I do hope it’s something within my reach. I do so dislike to leave a debt unsettled.’
Troy had told her the truth. He had no sense of calling in a favour. But he would never have called on her had he not been able to bank on her sense that he had done her job for her all those
years ago—tracking Jimmy Wayne where she could not, bringing him to book when her powers had reached their limit. He saw it as a connection, not a debt, but if that was how she saw it, it
was but a small difference. He wanted a favour. Whether it was owed or not was of no matter if she granted it.
On a small oak table in the alcove of the chimney breast sat two telephones, at arm’s length from her chair. A black one and a white one—the white had no dial. The standard equipment
of a senior officer of MI5. Muriel Edge was a section head. The white phone would lead directly to MI5’s own switchboard. She would have only to lift it to find a duty officer waiting to
address her by name. The favour Troy had to ask would be almost effortless for her.
‘Do you know Norman Cobb?’
‘Yes. I know Inspector Cobb. He did one or two jobs for me. But not lately. He is … ah … too heavy-handed. I can’t have that. There are better officers in the Branch, though
God knows, subtlety is not their middle name.’
‘Some time today he will have requested use of a safe house. I need to know where it is.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes.’
She shrugged as though he had accepted a shilling for a quid and reached for the white phone.
‘Yes. I need to speak to Norman Cobb of Special Branch. He’s in a safe house of ours. I don’t know which one. No, don’t put me through, just call me on the other line
when you know.’
She turned back to Troy.
‘He’ll be a few minutes. Why don’t you pour us both a drink. You’re as white as a sheet, you know. I think we could both use a brandy.’
Troy followed where the bent finger pointed, to the sideboard and its array of spirit bottles. He returned, set the glass next to her deck of cards, and sipped at his own. It still tasted like
soap, but she was right—it was just what he needed.
‘I’ve been following your career. From time to time, that is. You do have your ups and downs, don’t you?’
It should not have puzzled Troy—though it did—but she had not yet asked why he wanted Cobb in his MI5 safe house. And, it seemed, she would not.
‘You were the talk of the town a while back.’
‘Was I?’
‘Oh yes. I felt proud to have known you. When you told Ted Wintrincham you wouldn’t spy on Bulganin, but you would spy on Khrushchev.’
She was chuckling softly now—not at him, but, it would seem, with him.
‘You heard that? I wasn’t aware it was common knowledge.’
‘It’s not. It’s what you call uncommon knowledge. Ted’s quite a wag. Told the story with all the pauses, mimicked that overblown public-school accent of yours and then
laughed fit to bust. He told anyone who’d listen. Thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t manage to see the joke,’ said Troy.
‘Nor should you. That’s when they got you. You should never have agreed to any part of their plan. You should have got to your feet and told them to do their own dirty work. You
should have walked out of the door with not so much as a glance over your shoulder for fear of the salt pillar. It was madness. It was vanity in its crudest form. You were flattered they wanted
you. You were flattered by the chance to meet Khrushchev. You fell for hobnobbing, for rubbing shoulders with the great and the monstrous—but that’s when they got you. You’ve been
theirs ever since. And once they get you, you’re theirs for ever. You, you of all people, ought to have known better. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t know this. Once they get
you, you’re theirs for ever!’