'When you came to me a year ago with a similar suggestion, I'm afraid I threw you out. I suppose I should apologise. I was remiss.' There was a suitable silence while he pondered his dereliction. 'I instructed you to abandon your enquiries.'
'You told me they were unconstitutional,' Smiley said mournfully, as if he were recalling the same sad error.
'Was that the word I used? Good Lord, how very pompous of me!'
From the direction of the house came the sound of Jackie's continued crying.
'You never had any, did you?' Lacon piped at once, his head lifted to the sound.
'I'm sorry?'
'Children. You and Ann.'
'No.'
'Nephews, nieces?'
'One nephew.'
'On your side?'
'Hers.'
Perhaps I never left the place, he thought, peering around him at the tangled roses, the broken swings and sodden sandpits, the raw, red house so shrill in the morning light. Perhaps we're still here from last time.
Lacon was apologising again: 'Dare I say I didn't absolutely trust your motives? It rather crossed my mind that Control had put you up to it, you see. As a way of hanging on to power and keeping Percy Alleline out' - swirling away again, long strides, wrists outward.
'Oh no, I assure you Control knew nothing about it at all.'
'I realise that now. I didn't at the time. It's a little difficult to know when to trust you people and when not. You do live by rather different standards, don't you? I mean you have to. I accept that. I'm not being judgmental. Our aims are the same after all, even if our methods are different' - bounding over a cattle ditch - 'I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British. We can't expect you people to determine our policy for us, can we? We can only ask you to further it. Correct? Tricky one, that.'
Rather than chase after him, Smiley sat on a rusted swing seat and huddled himself more tightly in his coat, till finally Lacon stalked back and perched beside him. For a while they rocked together to the rhythm of the groaning springs.
'Why the devil did she choose Tarr?' Lacon muttered at last, fiddling his long fingers. 'Of all the people in the world to choose for a confessor, I can imagine none more miserably unsuitable.'
'I'm afraid you'll have to ask a woman that question, not us,' said Smiley, wondering again where Immingham was.
'Oh indeed,' Lacon agreed lavishly. 'All that's a complete mystery. I'm seeing the Minister at eleven,' he confided in a lower tone, 'I have to put him in the picture. Your parliamentary cousin,' he added, forcing an intimate joke.
'Ann's cousin actually,' Smiley corrected him, in the same absent tone. 'Far removed I may add, but cousin for all that.'
'And Bill Haydon is also Ann's cousin? Our distinguished Head of London station.' They had played this game before as well.
'By a different route, yes, Bill is also her cousin.' He added quite uselessly: 'She comes from an old family with a strong political tradition. With time it's rather spread.'
'The tradition?' - Lacon loved to nail an ambiguity.
'The family.'
Beyond the trees, Smiley thought, cars are passing. Beyond the trees lies a whole world, but Lacon had this red castle and a sense of Christian ethic that promises him no reward except a knighthood, the respect of his peers, a fat pension and a couple of charitable directorships in the City.
'Anyway I'm seeing him at eleven.' Lacon had jerked to his feet and they were walking again. Smiley caught the name 'Ellis' floating backward to him on the leafy morning air. For a moment, as in the car with Guillam, an odd nervousness overcame him.
'After all,' Lacon was saying, 'we both held perfectly honourable positions. You felt that Ellis had been betrayed and you wanted a witch-hunt. My Minister and I felt there had been gross incompetence on the part of Control - a view which to put it mildly the Foreign Office shared - and we wanted a new broom.'
'Oh I quite understand your dilemma,' said Smiley, more to himself than to Lacon.
'I'm glad. And don't forget, George: you were Control's man. Control preferred you to Haydon and when he lost his grip towards the end and launched that whole extraordinary adventure it was you who fronted for him. No one but you, George. It's not every day that the head of one's secret service embarks on a private war against the Czechs.' It was clear that the memory still smarted. 'In other circumstances I suppose Haydon might have gone to the wall, but you were in the hot seat and-'
'And Percy Alleline was the Minister's man,' said Smiley, mildly enough for Lacon to slow himself and listen.
'It wasn't as if you had a suspect, you know! You didn't point the finger at anyone! A directionless enquiry can be extraordinarily destructive!'
'Whereas a new broom sweeps cleaner.'
'Percy Alleline? All in all he has done extremely well. He has produced intelligence instead of scandal, he has stuck to the letter of his charter and won the trust of his customers. He has not yet, to my knowledge, invaded Czechoslovak territory.'
'With Bill Haydon to field for him, who wouldn't?'
'Control, for one,' said Lacon, with punch.
They had drawn up at an empty swimming pool and now stood staring into the deep end. From its grimy depths Smiley fancied he heard again the insinuating tones of Roddy Martindale: 'Little reading rooms at the Admiralty, little committees popping up with funny names...'
'Is that special source of Percy's still running?' Smiley enquired. 'The Witchcraft material or whatever it's called these days?'
'I didn't know you were on the list,' Lacon said, not at all pleased. 'Since you ask, yes. Source Merlin's our mainstay and Witchcraft is still the name of his product. The Circus hasn't turned in such good material for years. Since I can remember, in fact.'
'And still subject to all that special handling?'
'Certainly, and now that this has happened I've no doubt that we shall take even more rigorous precautions.'
'I wouldn't do that if I were you. Gerald might smell a rat.'
'That's the point, isn't it?' Lacon observed quickly. His strength was improbable, Smiley reflected. One minute he was like a thin, drooping boxer whose gloves were too big for his wrists; the next he had reached out and rocked you against the ropes, and was surveying you with Christian compassion. 'We can't move. We can't investigate because all the instruments of enquiry are in the Circus's hands, perhaps in the mole Gerald's. We can't watch, or listen, or open mail. To do any one of those things would require the resources of Esterhase's lamplighters, and Esterhase, like anyone else, must be suspect. We can't interrogate, we can't take steps to limit a particular person's access to delicate secrets. To do any of these things would be to run the risk of alarming the mole. It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? Who can smell out the fox without running with him?' He made an awful stab at humour: 'Mole, rather,' he said, in a confiding aside.