Blame The Dead

When I'd finished the pizza I spent an hour watching TV and practising a fast draw whenever a bad guy appeared. In fact, you can't really be fast with a sleeve gun unless your hands are close together already, as when praying or shaking hands with yourself, both of which look a bit odd in a tense situation. But you're as fast sitting down as standing up, so it's a good gun to watch TV with, at any rate.

Twelve

Friday morning was misty, with a touch of frost underneath. I got up slowly, feeling stiff just about everywhere, started the electric percolator, then busted my last egg trying to boil it. The only letter was a formal invitation to the Kingscutt funeral – posted in Harrow. I still didn't like the idea, but I was still going to have to do it. I spent most of the morning typing up a report I was doing for a chemicals firm: 'Dear Sirs, I have examined your offices, laboratories, and manufacturing plant with regard to the security aspects, and must say that I am impressed by the measures you have taken to render them espionage-proof [Always flatter the bastards first; they'll tell others that you're a bright, observant type]. However, there are a few areas in which I feel security might be improved…' And you end up, 'I suggest you keep this letter in a safe place and do NOT have it copied since it would be a useful guide to any industrial spy trying to penetrate your organisation…' That always impresses them.

Actually, the worst danger they had was the managing director, the sort who wouldn't tell you his first name during the working day and boasts about his new inventions in the golf club. How the hell d'you putthat in a formal letter?

About the time I was wondering if I'd got a stamp, and if so, where, the phone rang. I skipped the Scots accent this time, but still I only said, 'Yes?'

'Major?' A familiar voice. 'Dave Tanner.'

A private detective I'd first met when he was a military-police officer. A tough one, though if you're breeding a tough army you're going to need tough military coppers, and if you're not breeding a tough army you may as well give up wars and where's the fun in that?

Anyway, Dave had got out earlier than me and gone further; he now ran quite a sizeable agency, and I'd worked for him for nearly the first year after I got out – though my guess was still that some of his boys specialised in the sort of thing I was busy guarding against.

I asked, 'What can I do for you? You've got a case that's baffling the keenest brains in your mighty organisation?'

He chuckled. 'Could be, could be. How're you keeping?'

'Don't you read the papers?'

'Thought you'd done a pretty good job of staying out of them. Feel like a pint of lunch?'

'Maybe. Where?'

'The Lamb in Lamb's Conduit Street? '

'Okay. What's it all about, Dave?'

'Half past twelve. I'll tell you then.'

So that was that. I decided to take the car – I probably wouldn't have too much trouble parking there, and I wanted to know how my left arm would stand up to it. So I stopped off at the Regent's Park Road post office to send my report, and then it seemed easier to keep on that road and cross Camden Town through Parkway.

I got suspicious at the lights just before Parkway itself: a dark-green Morris 1300 didn't pull up beside me where there was room for him. Instead, he slowed and dawdled up behind me. And he stayed there for the next mile. Mind, so did several others: this was a main route towards King's Cross and the City. But there was something in his pattern of driving that looked as if it were based on what I did.

Any other time, I'd have been happy to make his acquaintance; we could have run up a quiet dead end and had a nice cosy chat about who and why and related topics. But right now I had a date, so he'd have to go in the deep freeze. Lose him but make it look pure chance.

For that, you can't do anything fancy – no doubling back or such like. Just stick on a logical route and use the traffic opportunities. I put a big Ford in between us at the turn into St Paneras Road, added a post office van at the Huston Road lights, and a couple of taxis at Guilford Street. After that, it was just a matter of time before he got chopped off by a red light. It happened at the Gray's Inn Road, and I was clear to circle back.

I hadn't given anybody a lesson in road manners, but it hadn't been any worse than you expect from people who drive small, slightly hotted-up cars. Nothing to make him suspicious; he'd be back.

Dave was waiting for me well back in the bar and getting started on a plate of sandwiches and a pint of bitter. I bought myself the same – so much for an invitation to lunch – and sat down.

With the blue suit, the neat, short grey hair, and the well-fed build, you'd have placed him in the Stock Exchange or maybe on the floor of Lloyd's. Except for the face. The face had that shapeless, slightly lopsided look of a small-time pro boxer. Dave had never boxed and I'd never asked him what else had happened; with a military cop you don't need to ask. Some soldier with a grudge had gone for a route march on that face one dark, lonely night. It's never the same after they use the boot.

He grinned at me, then saw the marks on my neck. "You been having fun and games, Major?'

'No, somebody else has. How's business?"

He took a vast bite of a cheese and tomato sandwich,"showing a bunch of teeth that hadn't been improved by that dark night, and spoke around it. 'Full house; we're up to our ears. And that bastard Laurie's leaving me to set up on his own. Do you want to work from an office again?'

Laurie was his security specialist; it wasn't good news for me, either, because he'd be reaching for work in my field. Still, I liked being on my own. 'No thanks, Dave. But I'll lend you a good book about security.'

'Get knotted, Major. D'you feel like doing a little sub-contract work, then?"

That was more like it. It might even be like picking up a new client or two. Firms that go security-conscious usually stay that way and come back to you when they're making some change. I might persuade them to come back to me. not Tanner.

I waved a friendly sandwich, 'Any time.'

Til let you know – could be soon. Keep in touch, hey?'

'Will do.' I took a mouthful of beer and wondered why I hadn't ordered Scotch on that cold morning. 'You might do something for me, Dave. D'you know what enquiry firms Randall, Tripp, Gilbert usually use?'

'Never worked for them myself… I think they've used Mac-Gill. And Herb Harris. Why?'

'I think they recommended somebody to a client some weeks back. Name of Martin Fenwick.'

He cocked his head and squinted at me curiously. 'Fenwick? Is that the bloke that got killed in France? '

'That's the bloke.'

'Are you still mixed up in that, then?'

'Sort of.'

He munched thoughtfully, then shrugged. 'Well, it's your business. 'I'll ask around.'

'Thanks. And one more thing.' I gave him the number of the green Morris.

'Hell,' he said disgustedly, 'you can pretend to be a copper on the phone as easy as I can.'

'It isn't always that easy.' And I knew Dave didn't work that way anyhow; he had his own private contact with the Central Vehicle Index.

'All right.' He stuck the piece of paper in his wallet. After that we just chatted about the Army until the place jammed up with fashionable young things from the Sunday Times having double-spread four-colour ideas in each other's Cinzanos.

I bought enough food to last me through the weekend and got home soon after two. My faithful green Morris wasn't around, but he turned up half an hour later and parked almost out of sight beside the church. Did I want to go and talk things over with him? No, it was too public and too cold and my left arm was stiffening up again. Let the bastard freeze alone.