‘Sir Max Calstock is the chairman. I expect you know him,’ Sibley added with the air of one administering the coup de grâce.
‘My mother does,’ said Johnny, remembering a man with a quiet voice and visionary eyes. Calstock was a man who’d dropped out of the public gaze. He’d served in some Conservative government of long ago. Which one? Heath’s? He couldn’t remember. Then he’d gone quiet, moved into the background, where his name just surfaced from time to time in the occasional bubble rising from activity down there on the seabed.
‘What’s your organization called?’ he said in the end.
‘Well, on the brass plate it’s Baron, Hockley Associates, but we have our own pet name. You’ve probably heard it. It’s becoming pretty universal now.’
‘And that is?’
Sibley smiled. ‘MI7,’ he said.
Chapter Three
In Johnny Kay’s circle of acquaintances, and that is all they tended to be, a lot of the conversations that took place behind his back would start ‘The trouble with Johnny is…’ although very few of them ever came to the same conclusion. There was something about him that didn’t quite add up for others occupying the establishment world of traditional values in which he had always lived.
On one level it seemed to be about timing. Johnny was usually a heartbeat behind his peers in his expressions of opinion. The certainties which propelled them seemed less certain for him. It wasn’t that he didn’t come to the same conclusion. Whether the subject was Socialism, the perfidy of Brussels, the absolute need to end capital taxation completely or the unfairness of forcing those with private health insurance to contribute to the NHS, he was always eventually on the same side but not without a brief internal hiccup each time. There was generally no other conclusion within his range of experience he could come to, but he was left feeling there was somehow a whole range of data he was ignoring. He kept all that very much to himself and those around him saw this apparent slowness to concur simply as a sign of slight stupidity.
There was even a physical side to Johnny’s inability to fit precisely into the ready-made background constructed so firmly for him by his mother. Johnny’s demeanour, language and leisure activities were robust and privileged, Henley, Goodwood and Twickenham. He could fly and had bought a share in a light plane but saw it mostly as an easy means of getting to French or Irish racecourses in congenial company. He had always pushed himself, testing himself in competitive sport, preferably with a hard physical side. His face however was at odds with that. Under wavy dark hair it was almost elfin, finely sculptured with a feminine touch, miraculously undamaged by the potential ravages of weekend rugger.
There were things he should have liked, indeed strived to like, about that life which, try as he might, he simply couldn’t – so, as he approached thirty, he seemed unable to get beyond superficialities with the Sloane girls in the office and in his social circle. The only girls for whom he felt genuine attraction were somehow unsuitable and had to be kept apart from the rest of his life. None of them lasted long. He took to reading in depth for the first time since school, but kept that a secret too. Poetry and esoteric religions accounted for a growing part of the untidy pile beside his bed.
Even to himself, Johnny didn’t quite add up. To find himself transplanted so abruptly from something he had seen as an inevitable and quite exciting career into the complete unknown of Ivor Sibley’s private enterprise kept a small froth of disquiet foaming away just under his ribcage.
The cab dropped Johnny at the side of the Tate Gallery and he walked through to John Islip Street. He had to ring the bell twice but then the lock buzzed open without any of the expected metallic interrogation via the little speaker. The first day of his new job – the first stake-out and the first major moment of unease. That wasn’t the way it was done in the office. Inside, the hall was furnished in discount store repro. Out of habit, he glanced at the names on the mail stacked on the cabriole legged occasional table without seeing any that he recognized then he climbed the stairs to the second floor past a Renoir print no longer completely laminated to its supporting chipboard. He tapped at the door of the flat and it was opened by a burly blond man who looked too young for his blazer and Guards tie. He remembered the face. ‘Johnny Kay,’ he said.
‘Glad you’re with us, Johnny. Adam Finberg. We were on that Coleraine thing together.’
Shush, he thought, not here on the landing. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said.
Finberg stepped back to let him in and closed the door. It was a sitting-room with big sash-windows looking out over the street to the houses opposite, cluttered with all the usual paraphernalia of a stake-out. Tables, chairs and a sofa had been pushed to the walls to clear space for the tripod in the middle of the field of vision. Johnny was still worrying about the unguarded response to the doorbell. He glanced down at the street to reassure himself that perhaps Finberg had been on the alert but the pavement just below was obscured by the projections of the architecture.
‘Did you see me coming?’ he asked casually, reviewing his movements to be certain he had been on this side of the road.
‘No, why?’ said Finberg, then laughed dismissively. ‘Relax, Johnny. You’re marching to the beat of a different drum now. Who else could you have been?’ The voice went with the clothes, clubland.
‘So, tell me the story,’ said Johnny.
‘Should be quite fun. The flat’s one floor down, diagonal right. Green curtains. You see it?’
He peered across the road. ‘Got it.’
‘There’s no one there at the moment. Chummy’s due in about an hour. Fifi L’Amour’s gone out shopping. Probably run out of baby oil or instant whip or something. You can see the bed from here and I went in and jinxed the curtain rail, bent the runner a bit when she went out so either they take the risk or chummy has to take a cold shower.’
‘Or they don’t do it on the bed.’
‘Oh, but that wouldn’t be the same, Johnny boy. The bed’s got the leather straps and the handcuffs on it.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Ansell? Thought you’d know. Member for somewhere unpronounceable on the Welsh border.’
‘Oh, yes, that one. Why are we doing it?’
Finberg looked at him in surprise. ‘Because we’re getting bloody well paid. Why else?’
‘No, I meant, who for? I mean it’s not just routine, is it? The office does those all the time. Members’ members, we called it.’
Finberg shrugged. ‘So, what’s the difference?’
‘Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? That’s protective surveillance. Makes sure we know if they’re getting into hot water. In case they open themselves up to blackmail.’
Finberg laughed rudely. ‘Come on. It’s information, that’s all. Information to be used to swing things. You’re not a Boy Scout and you never were.’
That stung him a bit. He didn’t want to sound naïve. A lot of his energy had always been expended on trying not to sound naive. ‘I just wondered who wants to know.’
‘If it makes you feel any better, for all I know we might be subcontracting for the office. You do know you’re working for Calstock, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘So what’s the problem? He’s just the unelected part of the government. That means he’s always in power, right? By the way, did Ivor tell you about the brown envelopes?’
‘What brown envelopes?’
‘Thought not. Silly bugger always leaves out the best bits. Came as a surprise to me too. Thing is, old boy, only two thirds of your pay goes into the bank. You get the rest in cash. Brown envelope job, marked “Unquantified Expenses”. Pretty sound practice that, I reckon.’