‘Billy,’ Miles began, ‘you’re not by any chance a double agent, are you?’
He watched Billy’s reaction. The car was parked now, and he was taking the key from the ignition. His face was flushed, but his eyes met Miles’s, and what Miles saw was not panic, but a mixture of emotions not the least of which was surprise.
Billy opened the car door and placed one expensively shod foot on the road before turning back toward Miles.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can talk inside.’
‘We can talk here,’ said Miles, not moving. ‘No fear of little interlopers here, after all.’
‘I’m not a mole, Miles,’ said Billy, smiling his most sincere smile and making his exit.
‘Drink?’
‘It’s a bit early for me,’ said Miles, checking his watch.
‘Yes,’ agreed Billy, ‘I try not to drink before breakfast, but when one has been awake all night...’
‘Of course.’
Billy poured himself a whiskey from his hip flask and added a drop of water from the sink tap.
‘Cheers then,’ he said, tipping the cup back as though it contained doctor’s orders. He examined himself in the mirror.
‘I’m no spring chicken,’ he said, still peering into the mirror. Then he turned and gave Miles a scolded schoolboy’s smile. But Miles was busy trying to perceive Billy from a woman’s point of view. He saw skin that was beginning to sag irremediably, hair that was thinning, keen eyes that seemed to hint at a force of intelligence trapped within its cell of a body bag.
‘Neither of us is,’ he said. He was seated on one of the room’s twin beds. It gave luxuriously beneath his weight.
‘So, what can I tell you?’ Billy sat down on the other bed.
‘You mean about Latchkey?’
‘Latchkey?’ Billy seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘No, I meant about Sheila and me.’
‘Oh.’
‘I mean, I can tell you about the first day we met, purely by accident at a Hayward exhibition. About how we talked, and how we met once or twice more, also to talk. It’s not a very exciting tale, Miles. What’s so ironic is that we were on the point of calling it a day anyway. I went to the house only that once, and then only because Sheila was upset about Jack.’
‘Upset?’
‘Well, he’d just left, and there was still a gulf between them, wasn’t there? She was just trying to understand.’
‘And she needed you for that?’ Miles remembered the warm bed and thought no, I can’t believe any of this.
‘Miles, blame me. I was attracted to Sheila, not her to me. I pushed our relationship. She thought our second meeting was chance, too, but it wasn’t. I’d set it up.’
‘All that time we lunched together, drank, gossiped, parted with a handshake and a smile, and all the time, all those months, you were... you...’
And then it happened, not at all the way he had wanted things to happen. He wanted venom or icy, muted snubs; anything except this stupid blockage in his throat, full of weakness and sentiment. He began to cry, his body jerking in little spasms. And, daring to look up, he saw that Billy, old Billy Monmouth, with a skin like that of a swamp alligator, was crying too, his body as still as marble.
‘Jesus Christ, Miles,’ Billy said softly. ‘I’m sorry, sorrier than I can say.’
Miles was blowing his nose when the door flew open.
‘Good God,’ rasped Colonel Denniston. ‘What’s been going on here?’
Stevens was doing it by the book. It was just that no one had bothered to write this particular book. Janine found him the man he needed at the embassy, a fairly expensive go-between who was able to substantiate — on tape, though he did not know it — that the assassinated man had been a private trader; in other words, was his own operator for most of the time, but did odd jobs for the security service. There was Hickey’s word for it that MI5 had bungled their surveillance operation and so had allowed the assassin onto the streets. But the Israelis seemed not to know this. So, lowly Jim Stevens had his lever with which to crack open the spies. He knew something they wouldn’t want the Israelis to know.
What else did he have? He had something only Janine’s charm and looks could have inveigled from a parliamentary officiaclass="underline" the Honorable Harold Sizewell MP was sitting on a hush-hush committee investigating the funding of the secret services and international cooperation between the various intelligence communities.
The dirt was there, he was sure of it. And the spade he needed with which to do his digging was Sinclair aka Hickey. Jim Stevens had his story.
He told Janine he’d buy her lunch, but hadn’t let on that they would be eating at her favorite restaurant. He had arranged to meet Macfarlane there, too, and over a long afternoon he would tell his editor the story, with Janine’s help. Macfarlane couldn’t turn this one away. The blinders were off.
‘Jim! I’m not dressed for this place.’ Janine had stopped at the door and was refusing to cross the threshold.
‘OK,’ said Stevens chirpily, ‘take off what you’re wearing and we’ll go in.’
She slapped his chest.
‘Pig,’ she said, smiling, as they entered the restaurant.
Stevens had found a tie in his wardrobe — unused for years — that was absolutely stainless. Hardly able to believe his luck, he had put it on, only realizing later, upon meeting Janine and her horrified gaze, that the pink tie was hardly a match for his light brown shirt.
It wasn’t one of the better tables, but what the hell. And it was a bit more pricy than Stevens’s credit card had bargained for, but it was a special occasion. They ordered aperitifs, and Stevens wondered where Macfarlane had got to. A waiter brought a telephone to the table.
‘For you, Mr. Stevens.’
‘Hello?’
‘Jim, it’s Terry. Listen, sorry I can’t make it. Can you come in this afternoon? I’ve got some bad news.’
‘Oh yes?’ For Janine’s sake — radiant, youthful Janine — Stevens tried to sound calm.
‘You’re fired,’ said Macfarlane. ‘None of my doing. The official line is that it’s to do with the hell-raiser photograph.’
‘And unofficially?’
‘No comment,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Sorry, Jim. Hope I didn’t spoil your lunch. Bye.’
‘Lobster bisque, I think,’ Janine was saying, ‘and an entrecôte for afters. Must watch my figure, mustn’t I? Jim? Is everything OK?’
‘Fine, Janine. Everything’s just dandy.’
He was determined, hardened more than ever now. Sod them all. He’d break this story if it was the last thing he did. Somebody would publish it, somebody must. He’d show them all. There came a time when the truth had to push its way up through the mire. Didn’t there?
Sixteen
When they finally did make love it was in glorious Technicolor to the music of the Beatles, Miles Davis guesting on trumpet. He felt the luxury of the mattress and the alcoholic glow in which they were both swimming. Everything was all right now, and though he couldn’t be sure who his partner was, whether Sheila or Billy or the Irishwoman, he knew that he was home at last and that he would never stray again.
The voice close to his ear told him that it was fine and always would be. Did it matter that some uninvited guest watched from behind the shutter of a peep-show booth, smirking? No, not really.
‘Miles?’ The voice seemed to come from the booth, where the eyes had grown feverish. ‘Miles?’