For a moment Narraway did not grasp what Croxdale was saying. He sat motionless in the chair, his hands cold, gripping the arms as if to keep his balance. He drew in his breath to protest, and saw in Croxdale’s face that it would be pointless. The decision was made, and final. The trap had him, like an iron gin on an animal’s leg, and he had not even seen himself step into it.
‘I’m sorry, Narraway,’ Croxdale said quietly. ‘You no longer have the confidence of Her Majesty’s government, or of Her Majesty herself. I have no alternative but to remove you from office, until such time as you can prove your innocence. I appreciate that that will be more difficult for you without access to your office or the papers that are in it, but you will appreciate the irony of my position. If you have access to the papers, you also have the power to alter them, destroy them, or add to them.’
Narraway was stunned. It was as if he had been dealt a physical blow. Suddenly he could barely breathe. It was preposterous. He was head of Special Branch, and here was this government minister telling him he was dismissed, with no warning, no preparation: just his decision, a word, and it was all over.
‘I’m sorry,’ Croxdale repeated. ‘This is a somewhat unfortunate way of having to deal with it, but it can’t be helped. You will not go back to Lisson Grove, of course.’
‘What?’ The word slipped out, leaving Narraway more vulnerable than he had intended, and he was furious with himself, but it was too late. There was not even any way to conceal it without making it worse.
‘You cannot go back to your office,’ Croxdale said patiently. ‘Don’t oblige me to make an issue of it.’
Narraway rose to his feet, horrified to find that he was a trifle unsteady, as if he had been drinking. He wanted to think of something dignified to say, and above all to make absolutely certain that his voice was level, completely without emotion. He drew in his breath and let it out slowly.
‘I will find out who betrayed Mulhare,’ he said a little hoarsely. ‘And also who betrayed me.’ He thought of adding something about keeping this as a Special Branch fit to come back to, but it sounded so pettish he let it go. ‘Good day.’
Outside in the street everything looked just as it had when he went in: a hansom cab drawn up at the kerb, half a dozen men here and there dressed in striped trousers.
He started to walk without any very clear idea of where he intended to go. His lack of direction was immediate, but he thought with a sense of utter emptiness that perhaps it was eternal as well. He was fifty-eight. Half an hour ago he had been one of the most powerful men in Britain, even though very few people knew it. He was trusted absolutely; he held other men’s lives in his hands, he knew the nation’s secrets; the safety of ordinary men and women depended on his skill, his judgement.
Now he was a man without a purpose, without an income — although that was not an immediate concern. The land inherited from his father supported him, not perhaps in luxury, but at least adequately. He had no family alive now, and he realised with a gathering sense of isolation that he had acquaintances, but no close friends. His profession had made it impossible during the years of his increasing power. Too many secrets, too much need for caution.
It would be pathetic and pointless to indulge in self-pity. If he sank to that, what better would he deserve? He must fight back. Someone had done this to him. It made sense only if it were deliberate and, regrettably, he could think of a score of people who might be responsible, and a score of reasons. The only person he would have trusted to help was Pitt, and Pitt was in France chasing socialist reformers with violence in their dreams.
He was walking quickly up Whitehall, looking neither right nor left, probably passing people he knew, and ignoring them. No one would care. In time to come, when it was known he was no longer in power, they would probably be relieved. He was not a comfortable man to be with. Even the most innocent tended to attribute ulterior motives to him, imagine secrets that did not exist.
Whitehall became Parliament Street, then he turned left and continued walking until he was on Westminster Bridge, staring eastward across the wind-ruffled water.
He could not even return to his office to look through the piles of papers he had and begin to search for anomalies, figures that did not add up, anything that would tell him where to look for the enemy who, for reasons of greed, hatred, or divided loyalties, had betrayed Mulhare, and in doing that betrayed Narraway also.
Then another thought that was far uglier occurred to him. Was Mulhare the one who was incidental damage, and Narraway himself the target of the treachery?
As that thought took sharper focus in his mind he wondered bitterly if he really wanted to know the answer. Who was it that he had trusted, and been so horribly mistaken in?
He was letting himself hate, and there was no time for such self-indulgence. Anger — a small amount of it — was good. It fired the energy to fight back, to deny discouragement, weariness, even the awful void of being alone.
He turned and walked on over the bridge to the far side, and took a hansom, giving the driver his home address.
When he reached his house he poured himself a quick shot of single malt whisky, his favourite, Macallans. Then he went to the safe and took out the few papers he had kept here referring to the Mulhare case. He read them from beginning to end, and learned nothing he did not already know, except that the money for Mulhare had been returned to the account within two weeks. He had not known because he had assumed the account dormant. There was no notification from the bank.
It was close to midnight, and he was still sitting staring at the far wall without seeing it when there was a sharp, double tap on the window of the french doors opening onto the garden. It was a rhythm that only a person’s knuckles could make. It startled him out of his reverie and he froze for an instant, then got to his feet. The speed with which he did it, moving away from the glass and the light, made him realise how tense he was.
The tap came again, and he looked at the shadow outside. He could just see the features of a man’s face beyond, unmoving, as if he wished to be recognised. Narraway thought for a moment of Pitt, but he knew it was not he. He was in France, and this man was not as tall.
He must concentrate — think! He had allowed this blow to stun him. In a single act they had removed from him almost all that mattered to him, his purpose, his value in other people’s eyes, and perhaps in his own as well, and also a great deal of his pleasure.
The man at the window was Stoker. He should have known that straight away. It was ridiculous to be standing here in the shadows as if he were afraid. He went forward and unlocked the french doors and opened them wide.
Stoker came in, holding a bundle of papers in a large envelope, half hidden under his jacket. His hair was damp from the slight drizzle outside, as if he had walked some distance. Narraway hoped he had, and taken more than one cab, to make following or tracing him difficult.
‘What are you doing here, Stoker?’ he said quietly, for the first time this evening drawing the curtains closed. It had not mattered before, and he liked the presence of the garden at twilight, the birds, the fading of the sky, the occasional movement of leaves.
‘Brought some papers that might be useful, sir,’ Stoker replied. His voice and his eyes were perfectly steady, but there was a tension in his body, in the way he held his hands, that betrayed to Narraway that he knew perfectly well the risk he was taking.
Narraway took the papers from him and glanced down at them, riffling through the pages swiftly to see what they were. Then he felt the breath tighten in his chest, and his own fingers clumsy. They referred to an old case in Ireland, twenty years ago. The memory of it was powerful, for many reasons, and he was surprised how very sharply it returned.