My God, he thought no wonder the world hates the British. We've done four centuries ofpeering all over the world, fingering people's lives and hoping for a bargain. The sins of Drake, Raleigh and Thomas Cook had finally come home to roost on Major H RMaxim. In a mood of gloomy cowardice he went and lunched with his own kind at the Greasy Spoon in the basement of the Ministry of Defence.
That afternoon George had to nurse Tired Tim through Question Time, so he sent Maxim to report back on a briefing being held at the American embassy. The speaker was a visiting CIA analyst who believed he had detected a shiftinfocus of Moscow's short-term goals as a result of the shake-out in East Germany. It was a good year for detecting goals shifting their short-term focus, certainly nobody was spotting revisions in interim stragetic themes any longer, at least not if they wanted to keep on flying the Atlantic first class. Maxim sat quietly through the briefing and an hour of questions afterwards, then stayed on for a drink with a new friend from the Army attache's office. He came out at five o'clock with a frost-bitten hand as evidence that he was]ust a non-transatlantic yokel who didn't know enough to use a paper napkin to hold a glass of deep-frozen bourbon. Then it took a quarter of an hour to find an empty phone box and call Caswell.
George was still at the House; they met below the statue of Northcote in the crowded, echoing Central Lobby. Maxim said flatly: "Blagg's gone. Run away."
"Do you know where?"
"No, except probably Rotherhithe way. He borrowed a motorbikeoffa matethere, and the mate seems to have called him in the country just after lunch and left a message asking him to call back, and he must have done that and then packed his bag and gone. Just a note saying thank you for having me and leaving a few quid. "
"Umm." George frowned down at the stone floor, letting Members and their constituents find their own ways round him. "Rotherhithe's the one place the police will be looking for him. You've no idea who this friend is?"
"His name was Jack. He'd lent Blagg his motorbike, but I don't have the number." Jim Caswell had been furious with himself for not noting that. He could describe the bike, as any good garage man should, but the number…
"Well, then…" George waved his usual handful of papers. "I suppose that endeth the last lesson. We just hope that when he gets picked up he's got enough sense to plead guilty and forget any names and details."
"I'd still have liked…" But he wasn't quite sure what, by now.
"Does you credit. But this is one time to imitate the action of the clam and hope that the chowder will pass us by."
"I suppose so. "
George put on his stern-but-kindly look. "Harry – don't do anything romantic. We'd miss you."
Chapter 7
The next morning, Maxim came into Number 10fizzing with the nauseating good humour of a breakfast cereal advertisement. He gave George a perfectly typed report of the CIA briefing, cross-referenced to recent papers and articles on the subject. He passed on some hot gossip about tactical nuclear command picked up from the Army attache's man, and then he started retelling what Chris had said on the phone about how well he'd done in the house cricket match.
George was suspicious of enthusiasm, particularly in the mornings, but a second-hand description of a prep school cricket match broke his nerve completely. The Blagg affair seemed to have blown over, he had Tired Tim's performance at tomorrow's Cabinet and another Question Time to worry about, so he readily agreed to Maxim taking the afternoon off to attend a lecture at the Royal United Services Institute. After all, he told himself, Maxim wasn't fool enough to go wandering around Rotherhithe with no better lead than a man called 'Jack'. If he'd bent his distracted mind to it, he might have realised there were one or two other little clues, but the very idea of tramping the streets asking questions of strangers was so far outside George's experience that he couldn't imagine anybody he knew doing it anyway.
Rotherhithe's whole history had been the Thames, but now the river was hidden behind clumps of derelict warehouses and shaky fences that sealed off the abandoned dock basins. Maxim had never realised just how complete the closure of theup-riverdocks had been, nor how total its effect on the neighbourhood. This wasn't the tough, rowdy waterfront, but a district left dazed, uncertain and incomplete. The buildings didn't seem to fit; a run-down Victorian terrace, a row ofneat little dolls' houses with varnished doors and gardens only big enough to park a motorbike, then a low block of modern flats, already cracked, with overgrown lawns and skeins of washing. There were gaps where houses had been torn down, several filled with second-hand cars plastered with garish Bargain Of The Week stickers.
Only the pubs remembered the sea: the Lord Nelson, the Warrior, the Jolly Caulkers, the Albion. The rest was churning cement lorries that scattered a fine dust in the sunlight, making Maxim hawk and spit every few minutes.
He tried the first motorcycle shop he came to He was looking for Ronnie Blagg, chap he'd known in the Army. He rode a Honda 4Oo N but a friend said he'd been around on a silver Yamaha XS5OO, two years old.
"He talked about coming back to Rotherhithe on his leaves," Maxim went on, "but he doesn't have an address here. He was an orphan, the Council brought him up The proprietor looked both suspicious and blank. "What did you want him for?"
"I thought if he was out of the Army now, he might be looking for a job."
"You come down herejust to offer him ajob?"
"I'd go a lot further to find a man I know's been properly trained and I can trust to work by himself. Some of the kids you get these days – well, you must know it yourself "
The proprietor, who was about forty, nodded sympathetically. His suspicions were gone, but he still didn't know Ronnie Blagg. Maxim left his home phone number and the name Fairbrother Blagg would certainly want to speak tohim, no matter what he felt about Maxim.
It was the same at the second shop Of course, Blagg didn't have to have bought his Honda in Rotherhithe; more likely he'd got it in Hereford during his three years with the SAS. And friend Jack might have got the Yamaha elsewhere, too. But he plodded on At the third shop he got a nibble.
There were two of them, and they could have been father and son The younger one said' "I think I know those bikes. The Honda's blue, is that right?"
Maxim didn't know.
"I remember the bloke He's been riding those two the last month or so. He's one of those that comes around Saturdays, mst for a natter with the other bikers and buy something small. Tack something But that other bloke, Blagg, I don't know him."
The father figure was leaning on one end of the counter patiently poking at a lump of electronics. He said quietly "The name rings a bell. Are you a friend of his?"
Maxim went into his act. At the end, he remembered something else: "He was a bit of a boxer, at one time."
"That's it," the father said, "That's where I heard it. I remember Billy talking about him. It was before your time," he said to the young man. "He must have gone in the Army nearly ten years ago. I remember Billy thought he could've been a contender "Billy?"
"Billy Dann. He runs the gym up at the Lord Howe. He manages Ranee Reynolds; he's a contender But you don't follow the fights'"
"I've been abroad too much. Will Mr Dannbe there now?"
"Should be " They gave him directions and he left his real name this time, just in case Jack whoever came by The Lord Howe stood on a wide street corner, a tall, confident square of red brick and ornate stonework from the great days of Victorian sin and gm. Now almost alonemthe afternoon sunlight among the boarded-up houses and second-hand car lots, it looked as wicked as a kitten stealing cream.