' "Lieutenants might marry, captains may marry, majors should marry, colonels must marry," ' he quoted. 'It doesn't say anything about corporals.'
'Corporals are trash, dust, less than the mud on an officer's boots.'
'They survive.' He smiled lazily and tuned a violin on his tooth again. 'The stories I read, it was just one shot. That isn't right, is it?'
I nodded.
His chair came back to earth with a bang. 'What calibre? What range was that?'
'Nine-millimetre; about fifteen yards.'
He swung around to peer through the grimy window at the gloom gathering already in the well outside. 'At six o'clock? In that light? Apistol? Christ, but he was lucky. Or you taught us wrong.'
'I was right.'
'Amateur, then. Just one shot. It must have been luck.'
'Or Hopalong Cassidy.'
'Yes.' He brooded on it.
The young reporter came across trailing smoke like a wounded Messerschmitt; he had to puff at that pipe every two seconds to keep it going. He dropped half a dozen fawn envelopes on Pip's desk.
'I've got all I need. I think the pieces are back in the right packets.'
'I bet they're not," Pip said sourly. 'Are you out after the Card bloke again?'
'Yes.' He glanced gloomily at his watch. 'From six till the first edition closes. I bet he isn't even back in this country yet."
'And you wouldn't even know him if you saw him.'
'Oh, I dunno. I got a pretty good description out of the French papers.' He consulted a notebook. 'About forty, six foot, thin face, receding brown hair, wears a dark blue-grey sheepsldn jacket.'
My jacket was slung over the back of my chair, but he hadn't even glanced at me.
'Clever boy,' Pip commented.
'Well, I'd better write up the Lloyd's piece.' He puffed his way out through the door.
I asked, 'When's the first edition…?'
'Half past eleven.' Pip picked up the Standard and fanned irritably at the smoke cloud hanging around his desk. 'But the agencies'll probably keep men there until about three in the morning.'
'Thanks.'
'Pray for a nice local sex murder and an airliner crash. D'you still want to look at these?'
He passed over the Lloyd's packets.
I was on the street just before six and the pubs were open – but some reporters might have sharper eyes than the boy wonder, so I walked along to the Strand and finally to the Charing Cross Hotel. The bar there doesn't get crowded early, and anyway, my suitcase was parked in the station.
The sky was solid cloud, low enough to pick up a faint orange glow from the street lighting, and an east wind nibbled at the back of my neck all the way. Except there was no snow lying in London, it was the same weather it had been in Arras, just twenty-four hours ago…
I took on one double Scotch and soda fast, just to improve the mood, and started a second one slowly as an aid to thought.
Our forces: well, just me so far. It looked as if nobody from Fenwick's syndicate was going to hire me, or even help me. Mockby and Maggie knew what it had been about – or some of it – and they weren't telling. Enemy forces: at least two of them, with a nine-millimetre automatic – though maybe that was down a drain as well – and very willing to use it. Unless they'd panicked, of course, but what had we done to panic them? Just the sight of two men when they'd expected one? (But I'd thought of that and mentioned it to Fenwick; he'd said they wouldn't be surprised to see two…)Our intentions: that was a bit easier – just to find out what the hell it had all been about. Method: just stagger blindly on asking the obvious questions of the obvious people.
Our secret weapons: one Bertie Bear Colouring Book. And a hell of a secret weapon it is when you don't know which button to press.
I looked into the bottom of my glass and made sign language for another.
Still, I must have advanced on some front today. If Mockby and Maggie knew something of what it was about, then it must touch on Fenwick's work – marine insurance. The newspaper clippings hadn't told me much, but they'd filled in some main features on the map. A full-time underwriter like Fenwick would have to put up no more than eight or ten thousand quid – in equities and giltedged shares – as a deposit with Lloyd's in order to become a member. Outside Names had to put up £15,000 and prove they actually had £50,000 plus. So Fenwick could have been the beggar at the Princess's christening. Did that mean anything?
I also knew that our Maggie had been in love with Fenwick. Question: had he reciprocated? Don't be filthy. Maybe I'd find out when I met Mrs Fenwick. Meantime, it was another advance – although I couldn't tell in what direction.
Before I left, I rang up and booked a room in a small tourist hotel up in Chalk Farm, not a quarter of a mile from my flat. It didn't have a proper bar and I'd heard the food wasn't much, so none of my resident reporters would be using it for a break.
The food was pretty foul, but I didn't want to risk eating out around my own neighbourhood. And I wasn't being entirely stupid in going there; I wanted to get hold of my car, and the safest time for that would be before seven in the morning. So I had to be close to start with. I went to bed about half past nine with my duty-free Scotch and Bertie Bear.
I read that damn book forwards, backwards, and upside down for the best part of three hours. It was the usual sort of gump, except more of it: straightforward pictures to colour, three-letter word puzzles, mazes to trace ('Bertie Bear wants to get the honey-pot. Can you draw the path for him?'), and pages where you link up the numbered dots and get a picture of you-know-who or his Best Chum, Dickie Donkey. Couple of right old security risks, if you ask me. I even drew in those pictures: they just might have turned into a map of where the Lutinesank with all her bullion. They didn't. And apart from my scribbling, there wasn't a mark on the book except the price. Unless it was in invisible ink.
Past midnight I threw the book across the room and tried to get to sleep. It took time and I wasn't helped by wondering if our Bertie wasn't just a bluff, a stand-in for another book or something that measured about fourteen inches by twelve and one inch thick. Getting Bertie instead might have been why Fenwick had thought the other side could turn rough.
It still hadn't been why they'd shot him.
Six
I'd asked to be woken at six but forgotten that by Internationa] Standard Hotel Time that was twenty to seven. I swore a bit, jammed on a few clothes, and decided I could shave when I came back for breakfast. I was outside my own flat just before seven.
It was just light – maybe too light for me, although that part of London doesn't get moving early. The sky had cleared to a pale cold blue and the windscreen of my blue Escort GT was solidly iced up. I got quickly into the driving seat and did my reconnaissance from there.
After a few minutes I was pretty sure nobody else was sitting and watching from a car, so it looked as if the day shift hadn't arrived. The only strange car I could spot – though that doesn't mean much in that area – was a maroon Jag XJ6. But it was iced up as badly as mine, and I didn't think reporters drove XJ6s. I was beginning to be tempted.
So far, I'd seen nothing moving except a lorry, one postoffice van, the newsboy who delivers to my flat, and an old boy in British Rail uniform. And yesterday's shirt was gritty on my back, and I could pick up another coat and stop being the man in blue-grey sheepskin, and… It would take less than five minutes, wouldn't it?
It's a new building with no real entrance hall and certainly nowhere to sit down there, so nobody could be waiting… I zipped through the glass doors and into a lift and up to the third floor. Again, no real corridor and nowhere to wait around. I was in through my door; dark, so I must have drawn the curtains before I left.
Then there was a creak and two dark figures stood up and one of them said,'Come on in, Card. We've got things to talk about.'
A torch flashed on, straight in my eyes, and after that there just wasn't anything I could do. Hands came out of the darkness and explored my clothes carefully, but didn't take anything.