And when the telephone rang, they lay still for a moment in the bed, both with a strong desire to ignore its magnetic plea. But both failed, and there was a giggling race to be first downstairs. Sheila won, and her arm, stretching toward the telephone, pushed it inadvertently onto the floor.
‘Whoops,’ she said, and then, scooping up the receiver, ‘hello?’
‘Can I speak to Miles, please?’
She handed over the telephone in resignation, sticking out her tongue. Miles grabbed the receiver gleefully, breathing heavily.
‘Hello?’
‘Miles, it’s Richard here. Listen, there was a terrible clunking sound when you answered. Be careful. I think you may be bugged.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Miles gravely, smiling and winking at Sheila, who had settled beside him on the parquet floor. ‘Well, I’ll certainly be careful, Richard.’ Sheila began to ask silently who was calling, but Miles only tapped his nose with his finger, and so she pushed him and caused him to topple. He dropped the telephone, then, having pushed himself back up off the floor, picked it up again.
‘There, did you hear it?’ asked Mowbray excitedly.
‘Yes, I did, Richard, most certainly I did.’
‘Good God. I wonder who’s bugging you, Miles?’
Miles knew exactly who was bugging him at that moment.
‘I don’t know, Richard. Was there something you wanted to say?’
‘Yes, I’ve got a message. But I’m not sure I should deliver it over such a nonsecure line.’
‘Well, give it to me anyway, as discreetly as you like.’ Miles watched Sheila rise to her feet and pad toward the kitchen. She had mimed the drinking of coffee, to which he had nodded eagerly. Watching her retreat, he smiled.
‘There’s a meeting this evening.’
‘This evening?’
‘A bummer, I agree. Mr. P wants to see us. Something to do with an offshoot of our recent harvesting activities.’
‘A sort of a seedling, eh?’
The humor was lost on Mowbray, who spoke past it as though explaining to an idiot the principles of addition and subtraction.
‘To do with our recent harvesting, Miles. This evening. Six-thirty at the office of Mr. P.’
‘Yes, Richard, of course, Richard. I’ll try to be there.’
‘Try? You’d better do more than that, Miles. You’re not exactly the favorite nephew at the moment, if you get my drift.’
‘Like a snowstorm, Richard.’
‘Where have you been today, for example? Not in your office.’
Miles watched Sheila coming back into his line of vision. She wore only her thin satin bedrobe.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’ve been around, Richard, believe me, I’ve been around.’
Seventeen
He had to brush late autumn leaves off the bonnet and the windscreen of the Jag. It had lain dormant for some time. The front bumper had been dented slightly, perhaps by some car trying to squeeze out of its tight parking space. No one, however, had put a brick through the front window, and no one had strapped a radio-controlled nasty to the wheel arches or the underbelly.
The drive, however, was not enjoyable, and this thought sent Miles jolting away from one particular set of traffic lights. He had always enjoyed driving his car, always. But something about the relationship seemed to have changed. Oh no, not you too, he wanted to say. The sounds of the engine, the change of the gears, the fascia, the leather that supported him, all seemed involved in a conspiracy of estrangement. He was just not right for the car anymore. ‘Divorce’ was the word that came to mind. He would sell the car and buy something more austere, or — why not? — would travel everywhere by public transport. Too often he had used his car as if it were a womb or a protective shelter of some kind. Well, he was ready to face the world now.
And he was ready, too, to face whatever awaited him in Partridge’s office. The car behind was too close. If he braked at all it would bump him. Why did anyone risk that kind of accident? Maybe the driver was Italian. The car wasn’t: it was German, a Mercedes. And it had been behind him for some time.
‘Pass me if you want,’ he said to himself, waving one hand out of the window. But the car slowed to keep with him, and Miles, his heart suddenly beating faster, took a good look in his rearview mirror at the driver. Maybe foreign; hard to tell behind those unseasonable sunglasses. Oh Jesus, it’s a tail. Of course it was a tail. What was happening to him? Slow, Miles, far too slow.
He pushed the car up to thirty-five, forty, forty-five, passed a couple of vehicles with an inch or two to spare, heard them sounding their horns, but his concentration was on the mirror and the Mercedes. It was like a shark after its prey: content to sit on his tail, to ride with him until he grew tired or panicked himself into the wrong action. Fifty, fifty-five: near suicide on these central city roads. He took a roundabout too quickly, and suddenly there was another car in the chase, its headlights on full, siren blaring. Miles didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The Merc signaled and turned into a side street, leaving the police car to do its duty. Miles signaled and pulled into the pavement. The car wedged itself in front of him and stopped.
Never mind. He had the telephone number ready.
A gun pointed at him through the window, ordering him to come out slowly. Four of them, none uniformed, all with handguns. Miles opened the door as though it were a surgical operation. He stepped out slowly, turned and placed his hands on the roof of the car. He didn’t want them to make a mistake and pull a trigger.
‘Is this your car?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have a report that this car has been seen in the vicinity of a bomb explosion.’
‘That’s ludicrous. I haven’t used the car for two weeks. It’s been sitting outside my house in St. John’s Wood all that time.’
‘I’m sure we can sort it all out, sir. Driver’s license?’
‘Look, officer,’ said Miles, thinking, this is a clever one, whoever’s behind it, ‘just do yourself and me one favor.’
‘What would that be?’
‘Just telephone Special Branch. I’ll give you the number. I’ve been set up, God knows why. Please, telephone Special Branch.’
The gun was still aimed at his head, still only needing a squeeze of the trigger. This would be a bad way to die, a wrong way to die. Miles willed the man into dropping the gun.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
Complete confidentiality, that was what Jim Stevens had promised Tim Hickey. From now on, only code names could be used, for Stevens was beginning to work his way deeper and deeper into the case. He told Hickey that the story was so big he had gone freelance, that he had a ready buyer. Hickey looked nervous. He didn’t like change. But Stevens was his only horse, so he nodded agreement.
An ex-colleague, one of the few left whom Stevens had not bad-mouthed out of existence on his final afternoon in the office, set up a watch on the comings and goings of the hush-hush Sizewell committee. It met twice a month in an anonymous building just off St. James’s Street. The location was curious in itself, but then the committee was engaged in difficult and interesting work: work that would interest many separate parties, not all of them scrupulous about waiting in line with everyone else to hear the ultimate findings.