‘It’s a spy novel, right?’
‘Sort of. Not our stuff though. The other place: cloak-and-dagger games with the Russkies.’
Miles, nodding in shadow, wondered what sort of games the mechanic was playing tonight, and thought back to his early days with Sheila. He remembered a drunken friend making repeated passes at her during a noisy all-night party and the way he had brawled with his friend in the middle of the dance floor. In those days he had fought to keep Sheila. And now...?
The lights went out in the living room, then came on simultaneously in the bathroom and the woman’s bedroom. She walked to her window and stared up at the sky, asking herself questions perhaps, or just dreaming. She played with her hair, twirling it so that she looked ruffled and feminine. The light went off in the bathroom, and, as Miles and Mowbray held their breath, the mechanic appeared in the doorway behind the girl and sought her permission to enter. She heard him, but kept on staring out of the window. Her face alone gave away her intent. With slow deliberation, she closed the curtains, and her silhouette was approached by the man’s, until they merged and moved back into the room, out of sight.
‘Lucky swine,’ muttered Mowbray, returning to his book. Then, a little later, ‘Would you believe it? There are two pages missing. Two pages.’ And he threw the book into a corner in disgust, where more pages fell away.
‘I should think that’s us for the evening, Miles.’
‘Yes,’ said Miles, ‘I should think so.’ He felt lonely all of a sudden, and chilled to the bone.
Fourteen
THE HELL-RAISER OF FLEET STREET!
Stevens, at his desk, stared at the clipping for the thousandth time. There was the photograph, the two sentences of journalese beneath it, and the bloody headline. They had been looking for some action, and, finding none, had caught sight of Stevens and a photogenic young lady. Bets had been laid, and the manager, who had promised them all a photograph and a story, had attempted his seduction. Everyone got an early night; they had their picture and their bare words of captioning.
THE HELL-RAISER OF FLEET STREET!
They’d be laughing their heads off back in Edinburgh. Look at what happened to our golden boy, they’d be saying. Sons of...
He picked up the ringing telephone.
‘Hello?’ he said. And heard the same measured voice, a poetry-recital voice, the kind of voice people paid money for. But was it the same voice? He would puzzle the day away thinking that one over, once he had heard the message. Straight off, however, he prepared himself for a few more words of wisdom from ‘Deep Throat,’ ready to tell the man that he needed more to go on... But his thoughts short-circuited when he heard what the voice had to say.
‘That’s for starters,’ it said. ‘Lay off Sizewell, or there’ll be more, much more. See you, hell-raiser.’
And with that the telephone went as dead as Jim Stevens’s tooth.
‘Jim!’
It was Macfarlane, his editor, calling from the inner sanctum. Rising from his chair, numb with shock from the call, Stevens had little time to wonder how many times he had walked this walk from his desk to an editor’s office.
‘What can I do for you, Terry?’
‘Close the door for a start.’
Stevens did so, muffling the sounds of the outside office.
‘This isn’t a social call then?’ he asked.
Macfarlane, seated behind his ancient desk, relic of the newspaper’s earliest years, pushed back his thinning hair. ‘Jim, I’m going to tell you what they told me — lay off.’
‘Lay off what?’
‘I don’t know. They said you’d know.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Too important for names, Jim. Over my head.’
Jim Stevens sat down.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘who gave you the message?’
‘Do you really want to know? God gave me the message. God himself, calling from one of his half-dozen country houses. Your boss, my boss, this paper’s boss.’
‘I’m impressed.’
‘You better be, or you can type your job out, stick it in an envelope, and post it to the moon.’
‘Over and out, eh?’
Macfarlane rubbed at the flesh on either side of his nose. He looked not only tired — he always looked tired — but somehow beaten into submission by life.
‘Look, Jim, I’m loath to say this. I’m a reporter too, remember. I don’t like it when someone pulls the blinders over my eyes and then leads me through a field full of shit. But the world works that way sometimes. There are jockeys riding us, and sometimes when you peep out from behind the blinders you see what’s better left alone. End of story.’
‘That’s very nice imagery, Terry, but it doesn’t add up to much.’
‘Then let me take it a stage further. You, Jim, are one step away from the glue factory.’
Stevens rose from his chair.
‘Thanks for the warning. I haven’t a clue what it’s a warning about, but I’ll keep on my toes, Terry.’ He opened the door. ‘You might even say I’ll keep on trotting.’
He closed the door behind him, but softly, and walked back to his desk. What was that all about? Sizewell was the obvious answer. He hated arguing with Macfarlane. It was rumored that the guy had something seriously wrong with him, that he worked through a lot of pain. Didn’t we all? He recalled their last falling-out. He had been sent to cover a suicide. Some bank employee had jumped from his sixth-floor office, leaving behind a young wife. Stevens had filed the story, only to be growled at by Macfarlane: what about the wife? Was she attractive? No, not especially. Well, why not say so anyway? The story’s too dull, almost dead. So you want lies? Jim Stevens had asked. And Macfarlane had nodded. Go for the sordid jugular, then alter the facts by cosmetic surgery. Why bother? he had thought. Why try to tell the truth when the truth isn’t wanted anymore?
Journalism these days meant stakeouts, infrared lenses, false identities, bugs. It was all change, desperate change. These days, news was twisted around into a corkscrew with which to extract the twenty or thirty pence from each punter’s pocket. He should have listened more patiently to Sinclair aka Hickey, should have gone by the old rules, but he had grown weary of trying to turn babbled stories into good copy.
The telephone rang again. Despite himself, he answered it.
‘Crime desk, I suppose.’
‘Mr. Stevens?’
Recognizing the voice, he brightened up.
‘Hello, Mr. Hickey. It is Mr. Tim Hickey, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Listen, I’m glad you called. In fact, I was just thinking about you. I’m sorry about our last meeting. I had a raging toothache, not in the best of moods, sorry. But I’d like us to meet again.’ He was working now, pen in hand. Someone up there had given him a second chance, and he would kick like a mule until Macfarlane’s ‘jockeys’ had all been unseated. ‘I’d like to hear your story. Really I would.’
Miles Flint had spent a rare free morning in the reading room of the British Museum. He had not been given this time off; he had been ordered to take it, ordered by Richard Mowbray, who said that he was worried about Miles’s ability to function after so long on the surveillance. Take some air, Miles. Don’t let us see you for a day. So he had trekked into the city and caught upon some articles about beetles in the recent journals.
Leaving the museum, he bumped into Tony Sinclair.
‘Tony!’
‘Hello, Miles.’ Sinclair seemed surprised, and not very pleased to see him. ‘What are you doing here? Keeping tabs on me?’