‘Why should I do that, Tony? No, it’s just my day off. I was doing some research. And you?’
‘Killing time.’
Miles nodded. ‘I heard you’d moved on.’
‘There was no volition in it. I was pushed out. Didn’t you know that?’
Sinclair was eying him warily, glancing at the passersby.
‘No,’ said Miles. ‘This is news to me. I’m a bit out of touch, I’m afraid.’
‘You had nothing to do with it, then?’
Miles shook his head, and Tony Sinclair seemed to relax.
‘I was never even asked for a report on you,’ Miles said.
‘I don’t understand it, Miles, really I don’t.’ Sinclair’s voice was becoming elegiac.
‘Well, neither do I, Tony.’
But Miles had wondered about it, oh yes, he had wondered.
‘Look,’ said Sinclair, checking his watch, ‘I really must be going. I’ve a meeting with someone.’
‘Which way are you headed?’
‘Charing Cross Road.’
‘Fine, I’ll walk there with you.’
There were way too many questions in Miles’s head for any order of importance to be ascertained, and so he ended up asking none. He had wanted to meet Tony Sinclair, yet now that he had, he was reticent, not knowing if he wanted to know any more than he already did. Knowledge was weakness sometimes. He knew that now.
At the corner of Oxford Street they parted. Miles had refrained even from asking for Sinclair’s telephone number. So that was that. He watched him disappear, to be swallowed up by the midday crush, then started along the obstacle course that was Oxford Street. Some workmen were putting in a new window to replace the one which had been blown out. Miles shivered, remembering that day. People had fear in their eyes: any one of these windows might be treacherous. They walked past almost on tiptoe. As he made to move into the road, a hand grabbed his arm.
It was Tony Sinclair, his teeth brightly displayed.
‘Latchkey stinks to high heaven,’ he snarled. ‘You already know that, so why aren’t you doing anything about it? I’m going to do something, that’s a promise. I’m going to find out why.’
And with that he was off again, forcing his way past the protesting office workers, a man beating against the tide.
Well, good for you, thought Miles, good for you, Tony Sinclair. You’ve reminded me of something I was longing to forget.
All the same, the way things were going he did not give Tony much hope of success. He felt a wintry gust, and it was as though he were already in the funeral parlor, staring into the open coffin.
The phone rang and rang but she wasn’t answering. Where the hell was she? Out doing research? In bed with some athlete? Stevens didn’t care. But he needed her help. It had been an unprofitable lunch; Sinclair aka Hickey had known a bit after all. So the Israeli’s assassin had been followed and lost by the spies, and the murder itself had been hushed up by the Israelis. It was front-page news, but Stevens wanted more.
‘Answer, Janine, for Christ’s sake,’ he said into the mouthpiece.
He knew now that he had something, and that his hunch about the murder had been correct. Here was something more for Janine to work on. Well, if she wouldn’t sleep with Harry Sizewell, she’d have to earn her pennies the hard way. He touched at his temporary filling. There was something rotten behind it all. That went for the tooth, too.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Janine?’
‘Oh, hello, hell-raiser.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘OK, OK, just joking. What’s got into you today?’
‘Where do you want me to begin? The world caving in on me or the terminal disease?’
‘Like that, huh? And I don’t suppose you’re phoning up for sympathy?’
‘I’m phoning because there’s some ferreting I want you to do.’
‘OK, just show me the rabbit hole.’
‘My, we are sharp today, aren’t we?’
‘Is it Sizewell?’
‘Not this time. Different story, same pay.’
‘Pay? Is that those coins you give me every Friday?’
‘You just got demoted to a three-day week.’
‘On parity with you now then, eh? I’ll tell my union about you.’
‘Look, Janine, I yield to your wit, OK? Now, you are a beautiful young woman, intelligent, charming, and you’re going to go places. And the first place you’re going to go is the Israeli embassy in Palace Gardens.’
The order came down by way of Partridge.
‘Mr. Partridge said that?’ asked Mad Phil, a complaint forming within him.
‘Yes,’ said Mowbray, ‘Mr. Partridge said that.’
Harvest had been declared dormant, and Miles would have to seek other accommodation, leaving the unfolding story of the mechanic and the secretary. He knew now how Mowbray had felt on that night when he had discovered the gap in his novel. He supposed a hotel would be the answer now. He knew of a good, cheap place near Russell Square. It had been used by the firm in the past for various purposes, but was now, so far as he knew, dormant, too.
‘You’ll be moving your stuff, won’t you, Miles?’ Mowbray asked, making it sound like the order it was. ‘This place will be going back on the market tomorrow afternoon.’
‘I’ll move out in the morning, if that suits.’
‘Well, the property chaps won’t be along before lunchtime,’ said Mowbray faintly. He was staring out of the window. ‘Three months. For close on three goddamn months we’ve been watching that place, and for what? A great big nothing.’
‘As usual,’ said Phil, not allowing the opportunity for a quick grumble to pass.
‘Yes,’ agreed Mowbray, ‘as usual, eh, Miles?’
There was a long pause while Mowbray realized that Miles’s last case had not exactly ended in a whimper.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘That’s all right, Richard,’ said Miles. ‘It’s nice to have had a quiet mission for a change. Peace and quiet. It’s been a nice break for me.’
And he gave a smile that seemed to unnerve his companions more than it cheered them.
That night, Miles was alone as he watched from the window in the darkness. The house was silent, and he was left to his thoughts. The living-room curtains flickered with blue light from the television set, but there was no listening apparatus now, and an engineer would visit the house tomorrow to retrieve the bugs.
The girl was in the house alone, which was unusual. Miles had passed her in the street and in the local supermarket, had smelled up close the perfume she wore, had heard her voice. He rubbed at his chin, feeling a day’s stubble. His thoughts were nervous companions, flickering like the television. He knew that it was not uncommon for a watchman to come to empathize with his quarry, to feel a bond of something like friendship. But he was a senior, trained to near perfection in his art. He should not be allowing these emotions such free rein.
But he did.
So it was that he found himself in the garden of her house, wandering freely beneath the street’s sodium glare, picking his way toward the living-room window, the flashing blue of the curtains, and her, the woman, somewhere within. The garden was overgrown, but not yet too far gone. He did not make a sound as he moved, the grass underfoot wet and yielding. Some condensation on the windows showed that she was alive, was breathing only feet away from him. He was absorbed, not thinking, hardly daring to breathe himself, just watching.
So he did not notice, in this new scheme of things, when the blue of the television became a sharper, brighter blue, the blue of a police car, which sat outside the house as the two officers approached him slowly and asked him to accompany them to the station for questioning. She stared out from behind her curtains as he was led gently away, and a neighbor across the way shouted out something that, mercifully, he did not catch...