A Coat of Varnish (35 page)

Humphrey had seen them all downstairs. Kate could hear the front door shutting. He rejoined her in the drawing-room, took another drink, sat on the sofa beside her. After a pause: ‘Now I suppose you know.’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘I mean, what I haven’t been able to tell you.’

‘You should have done. Whatever it is.’

He was gripping her hand. ‘I had to promise secrecy. Even to you.’

‘I think you should have trusted me.’ She was frowning with anger as well as hurt.

‘Of course I trusted you. But I’d made an undertaking. You know I trust you. Look here, you know as well that I’m not much of a one for moral dilemmas. But I couldn’t see the way out.’

‘You ought to have done. You were wrong. You’d better tell me now.’

‘I think you know.’ He was still finding it hard.

‘I said before that I’m not sure.’

‘I’d better tell you.’ His voice was hard. ‘They are fairly certain now who did it.’

‘Who?’

‘Perryman, of course,’ he said, with a trace of impatience. ‘Why do you think I wasn’t specially enthusiastic about having him here tonight? I was pretty certain how they were thinking when you wanted to ask him. I hadn’t been told.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Kate burst out. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘I’m afraid you may have to. You must take it from me that they are certain.’ Humphrey began to speak more easily, more lovingly. Yes, he had found it hard to believe himself. Of course he had been jealous of Perryman, in spasms, when he hadn’t had any security with Kate. Yes, that made him doubt whether he did suspect or didn’t suspect. But, anyway, any suspicion of his wouldn’t have counted. It was the police who had settled it by themselves.

‘How?’

‘It must be him. They’ve settled it. If it’s not someone absolutely unknown.’

‘That’s a big if.’

‘They don’t think so.’

‘Do you? Do you?’

He hesitated a long time, as though he were stammering. ‘Intellectually, I can’t get away from it. Somehow I’m not absolutely convinced.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Kate flared up again, ‘why ever should he?’

‘It looks as though for a certain amount of money. For a relatively small amount.’ He told her some objective facts about Lady Ashbrook’s arrangements and the fund.

‘Do you think it makes sense?’

‘I don’t know whether it makes sense,’ said Humphrey. ‘But I told you, intellectually I can’t see any way out.’

‘What do they think Ralph Perryman got out of it?’ She said ‘they’, not ‘you’, projecting her bitterness, or her disbelief, away from Humphrey.

‘He can’t have had much yet. It would have come slowly. And not very much in all.’ He told her some more of the objective facts. The Ashbrooks hadn’t been well off. ‘Heaven knows,’ he said dryly, ‘they can’t be said to have been careless with what they had. Up to the present, the police believed that Perryman had taken no more than he was entitled to, just for his services. If all had gone according to plan, he might have got another few thousand pounds.’

‘You mean to tell me’ – their hands were touching, but she confronted him – ‘he’s supposed to have done all this for a potty little sum like that?’

‘I’ve seen people do all manner of things for less.’

‘Oh, drop your reminiscences.’ Then she said she was sorry. Her skin was flushed, eyes brilliant, temper lost. She could be a spitfire with others, not with him, except to provoke, which she wasn’t doing now.

‘Do you honestly believe that this man – you know him, so do I – did all this just for that?’

‘Perhaps neither of us know him.’

‘You do believe he did all this.’

‘I’d prefer not to.’

She was brooding. In a practical fashion, she suddenly said that the evidence sounded weak. Wouldn’t the case be difficult to prove? Humphrey said that he had said as much to Briers, almost in the same words. Perhaps that would make them wait until something more had broken. Perhaps that was why he had been sworn to secrecy.

They were hankering to go to bed. They then thought again. It might have left a chagrin or the sadness of the flesh, which neither of them was used to feeling, nor wanted to risk that night.

Humphrey was sitting in Frank Briers’ office in Scotland Yard, waiting for him to return. This was the latest Scotland Yard, the office block in Victoria Street. Indistinguishable from other office blocks, nothing like so picturesque – Humphrey thought, who was old enough to be disaffected by change – as the good old building down by the Embankment, still called in the English style New Scotland Yard. Humphrey walked over to the window. This room was on the top floor (fourteenth storey), what in an apartment block would have been the penthouse. Down below was the lighted snake of Victoria Street. Humphrey, disaffected again, thought that was indistinguishable from other streets, in any big city anywhere. He could get a glimpse of Big Ben, which was rather more appealing. It was nearly nine o’clock at night, since Briers and his colleagues worked late hours. Under the clouds, beyond the river, there swirled the russet-lurid glow of London. All towns had their nightly luminescence, but to Humphrey London’s seemed further to the red end of the spectrum than any other.

Quick steps outside. As Briers came in, he was saying: ‘Sorry to keep you.’

‘Gone all right?’

Briers had been explaining to his superiors what he intended to do. He had a good tactical sense. It was as well to be insured if things went wrong and, if they went right, superiors felt they had earned a share of the credit.

‘Quite all right.’ Briers was terse, cheerful, intense with action.

Humphrey didn’t take the initiative. Briers had asked for him presumably to tell him the programme. That, however, Humphrey as good as already knew, after the talk of the previous week. Now it was all worked out, Humphrey couldn’t be any further use, not that he had been much effective use before.

Humphrey observed, like a friendly visitor: ‘Grand office you’ve got here, haven’t you?’

This was the first time Humphrey had seen it. Yes, it was a sumptuous office, by London official standards, something like what would have been prescribed for a high civil servant, carpet, sofa surrounded by easy chairs, suitable for informal meetings, long table surrounded by hard chairs, suitable for formal meetings, drinks cupboard, private lavatory.

‘A bit above my rank.’ Briers thrust out his underlip. ‘As I told you – didn’t I? – the previous occupant is being entertained by Her Majesty.’ Gallows gibe, meaning prison. ‘Still, I might get a step up before too long. So I gather. Unless I blot my copybook.’

Briers was being calmly realistic about his career. Shortly afterwards, he proceeded to be calmly realistic about the case. He had been conferring with the lads. It was a time to get morale steady, expectations not too high, not too low. Public grumbles were needling away. Some newspapers didn’t leave them alone for long. Nor did some MPs. A handful of Tories talking of law and order, a couple of left-wingers who proclaimed that upper-class persons (pointing towards Loseby but not naming him) were being protected.

‘God help us,’ Briers remarked, as he thought of those politicians with the only stab of venom he showed that night. He stabilised himself. ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ he said. ‘But, other things being equal, it might be just as well to show a bit of our hand.’

‘Are other things equal?’ Humphrey was thinking, his old job had almost all conceivable disadvantages, but, since no one knew what they were doing, there had been one advantage. His name hadn’t been mentioned in the Press or the Commons once in his official life.

Briers said that with the evidence now in hand they couldn’t bring a charge against the doctor. All his team agreed. So did the high-ups downstairs. He pointed at the floor, but as though he had the direction wrong, and was speaking of elevated beings. Further, they all agreed that there was no serious chance of decisive evidence coming nearer. They might extract more details of the fund from New York. That would prove nothing. They could have a streak of random luck. It sometimes happened, but it was no use reckoning on that. There was only one thing for it. They had to make a direct attack on Perryman himself.

They couldn’t charge him, but he could help them with their enquiries. Briers used the sanctimonious phrase with a grin. When he was a young man, he had often heard Humphrey say that modern English consisted of taking the meaning out of words.

He maintained his mordant grin. ‘Sometimes they help us quite a lot, you know.’

Then he said: ‘You see, it’s the only way, isn’t it?’

‘So it seems.’

‘We know a lot now that he doesn’t realise we know. We can give him a thorough going-over. It may take some time. It’s the only way.’

‘I dare say.’

Briers was talking like a detective immersed in the job and nothing else, but he was also being considerate to his friend. He believed that Humphrey still had his reserves. Briers wouldn’t press him to agree, or even to disagree. It was better to leave it. Humphrey understood. But he was also beginning to understand why Briers had wished for his company that night.

‘There’s one question left,’ said Briers. ‘When? When do we do it?’

‘I need hardly tell you,’ Briers went on, smile truculent, combative, ‘that there have been differences of opinion. Among the lads, I mean. Now or later. That’s the alternative. Some of them want to wait for something to turn up. It’s only a chance in hell, they say, but it’s worth waiting for. Old Len Bale has been sitting on his hands on that side. He’s a bit of an old auntie in some respects. Not all.’ Briers seemed to be feeling surreptitious amusement, for reasons not disclosed to Humphrey. ‘But some of them want to jump in straight away. The argument is, we’ll get him by surprise. He might be thinking he’s home and dry and we’re not giving him a thought. He can’t have any idea what we’ve thought out. He doesn’t even know we’ve been busy with Loseby and that girl. Loseby hasn’t been in touch, we know that. We don’t think he ever was. Anyway, nowadays Loseby and his wife are thinking of their own precious skins. She doesn’t think of much else, that one.’

Briers made some observation about Susan. Then, back to order, he said: ‘The argument against, against going in now, that’s straightforward. If it goes off half-cock, then he’d be prepared next time. Now we’re in the driver’s seat, we ought to know enough to break him down. If we muck it up, then we’ve thrown the advantage away.’

There was no tension in the room. This was a witness of friendship, of the old friendship quite restored. Humphrey knew, though, with detached amusement, that it was something more. He was serving a purpose. Briers needed someone, outside the machine, who had nothing to gain, on whom he could try out the arguments and the doubts. Humphrey had seen something of men of action in his time. When they were making a decision, they needed someone who would listen, not persuade them, not disturb them. It was the reason for the mysterious cronies whom prime ministers relied on. As a rule, they were anonymous figures. The Civil Service used to have a name for them – the top man’s sounding-board.

‘Well,’ Humphrey said without expression, ‘which side are you coming down on?’

‘Do you have to ask?’ Humphrey gave the twitch of a smile.

‘I think not. No, we go straight in. It’s a bit of a risk, of course. But the pros are stronger than the cons. That settles it.’

Briers spoke like one weighing his judgment, but he had made the decision days before.

He asked another question: ‘By the by, what do you think the chances are? I mean, will the man give?’

Humphrey was certain that his answer would affect nothing. He could indulge in some detached reflection. They both knew, he said, if you had seen something of people, that some responses you could foresee. But two you couldn’t – at least, Humphrey had never met anyone who could. One was physical courage. No one had been able to predict that. The other, and it wasn’t the same, was resistance to breaking strain. He wouldn’t have put a penny on his own guesses. Perhaps he might have said that anyone like the young woman Susan, soft and unresisting on the surface, viscous tough underneath, would survive most interrogations. Perhaps harder and more brittle natures were more likely to crack. That might be true with the doctor. ‘I wouldn’t like to bet on it, I’m telling you. But I should have thought there was a chance.’

‘Fair enough.’ Briers had listened with friendly attention, nothing more.

He returned to his calm realistic assessment: ‘I’ve told the lads, of course, that they must be ready for a disappointment. We haven’t too much going for us. We may be left flat on our faces. I have reminded them of the times when we were just as positive, and the man went away laughing at us, and is still scot-free.’

Briers continued about his warnings against excessive hope. He had issued them, Humphrey had no doubt. Briers had a realistic mind. He had suffered his failures. And yet he was warning himself more than anyone else. Humphrey, who had thought earlier of the habits of prime ministers, was reminded of another one. He thought of Churchill before the desert campaigns, solemnly warning the nation that nothing was certain in war, and that no one could promise victory. The trouble was, no one believed it, because he didn’t himself. The message was sober, the tone was not. Briers could have given his colleagues all the professional cautions in existence, and they would have felt that he was confident; and they would have been right.

It was all scrupulously polite in the back room of the police station. This was where Briers’ inner squad had conferred on their first afternoon and often since. Now it was being used for questioning, or what a less delicate observer might have called interrogation. On one side of the table there were Briers himself and Inspector Flamson; on the other Dr Perryman.

It would have been difficult for an outsider to be certain which way the initiative was going. It might not be easy for the insiders. Perryman had been brought into the station just after 5.30 in the evening and the process had started at 6 p.m. It had not been an arrest, for, as Briers had told Humphrey, they had nothing like enough to make a charge. A couple of the team had been sent round to the doctor’s house with a quiet request: there were some things to clear up; yes, perhaps he had better bring a suitcase – it might take a little time. The sergeant in charge reported that Perryman seemed prepared. He was careful and slow in his movements, as though conscious of his own breathing. He made some sort of joke. He had plenty of patients in Belgravia, he said, but this would be the first time he had ever slept there. The policemen didn’t see any distinction between Blomfield Terrace and Belgravia and didn’t respond.