Blame It on the Bossa Nova (28 page)

I was aware of being very cold, then I awoke and saw that the windows were frosted with ice and that it was the cold that had woken me. I was upstairs in the front bedroom, the bigger of the two. I had slept here before on summer evenings, with Cambridge girls, when the cars of the weekend cottagers roared late into the night past the cottage and on up to Burnham Overy Staithe, Wells and Blakeney, and their waiting weekend boats and fisherman’s smocks. I was alone. How I had got there I couldn’t remember, nor what had terminated the post-coital embrace. I assumed Pascale was downstairs. As I became fully awake I realized just how cold it was. I had laid on top of the bedclothes, under an eiderdown, but at some time it had fallen off. I remember wondering if the intense cold had killed off Chris - he had seemed so fragile - but my first action was to walk to the small leaded window and breathe on a pane and then rub it with my fingers. In summer you could lie in the double bed and watch the headlights of cars as they travelled up a lane, across the brow of a hill a mile away. Now that was completely gone, not just covered by the snow that had first fallen when we were away in France at Christmas, but by fresh drifts that had come in the night after we’d arrived, and come in force. The van was completely covered, a slight hump in the snow below the window showed where it was parked. The snow was banked up four or five feet against the walls of the house, it lay deep on the road and described the form of the hedgerow the other side so that I had the illusion, similar to that when flying above clouds, that I could step out and walk on it, just walk away. Nothing moved. I was already dressed. I went downstairs. Nothing moved. Chris was still on the divan, white and motionless. I grabbed hold of his hand, he was stone cold and still didn’t stir. I really thought he was dead. I opened an eye, it was glazed. I was convinced he was dead. Then he groaned and turned in his sleep. I let go of him and walked away. The fire had gone out, leaving the grey powdered ashes and the final log that had been too much for it to take on. There was no one in the kitchen. Pascale was gone. I opened the back door and thirty cubic feet of snow fell into the room. It was impossible to shut it again. I looked out of the window at the front where the fire in its death throes had retarded the frosting of the glass. There were no footprints anywhere, she had got out before the fresh falls.

The sun came up, the subtle and modest Norfolk sun that does not actually appear, but prefers to reveal its presence by a slight brightening of the uniform grey tones of the sky. It shed no warmth. Chris woke up and told me he was hungry but there was nothing in the place except for a few sticks of dried spaghetti. I made him a cup of tea with powdered milk. I was hungry. Chris woke up completely and commented adversely on our circumstances, for some reason he held me responsible. I searched inside his bags of “necessities” and found a packet of maron glaces to be the only useful item. We nibbled on them until midday when I decided to put Chris to bed upstairs. I found a hot water bottle and melted some snow on the gas ring. The water pipes were all fractured. I gave him more valium and he slept again and at least left me in silence. I took the shovel from the grate and worked at clearing the snow from the kitchen floor. After an hour I had got the door closed and got myself warm. Night fell. The fresh logs were outside, inaccessible. I got all the blankets from upstairs and lay on the divan reading about the shrine of Our Blessed Lady of Walsingham from a guide to North West Norfolk I had found on a shelf. Then I read about other churches. I was wide awake, neither bird nor animal moved outside. Eventually I fell asleep.

They came with snowploughs and shovels, inching their way down from Burnham Market, and reaching us at half past two in the afternoon. We were incidental to their operations and they continued southward to dig out the village proper and all that lay beyond on the road. I was standing in the roadway outside the cottage, drinking a cup of tea from the mobile back-up unit when it was discovered that the old lady who had given me the key was dead. She had died as the blizzard set in. They looked after her husband who had been alone in the house with her, awaiting partial rescue.

An ambulance arrived and two guys went inside the cottage to have a look at Chris. They called out for a stretcher and ten minutes later he came out on it. He went off in the ambulance with the old boy. I asked a guy where they were going and he said the name of a cottage hospital that I didn’t remember. I imagined Chris and the old boy, unlikely ward mates. Cottage hospitals in Norfolk weren’t his scene. I went over and looked at him and they stopped for a second. He was half awake, murmuring, but he didn’t recognise me. I took hold of his hand and squeezed it before putting it back under the blanket. I felt tears welling up in my eyes and then I felt them trickling down my face. It was a silent grief, not noble - selfish, there was shame in it, for what they had made me do to him, and just how little pressure they had had to apply to make me do it. They put him in the ambulance and drove off. It was the last time I ever saw him, although I saw his pictures in the papers a month later when they charged him.

As the ambulance disappeared I reflected that I had hit the buffers. The activities of snow clearing were proceeding, a few yards away a couple of villagers stood around chatting. But what was I to do? This was in every sense the end of the line. I looked at the snow sculpture of an A35 van, the cottage, the fields. I wasn’t there. None of it was anything to do with me. I don’t know if I would have ever had the energy to move from the spot if a guy hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to get into the back of his car. Another guy got in next to me and we headed back up the road to Burnham that the ambulance had taken five minutes earlier. The snowplough’s narrow track was all that had been re-claimed from nature. Conditions didn’t improve ‘til we got onto the Hunstanton coast road and entering Kings Lynn. We went straight to the cop shop. It wasn’t until after they’d given me another cup of tea and asked me to give identification and to show them my driving license and insurance, and then let me have a lie down and a sleep, that they told me I was under arrest.

They held me there overnight, then took me down to London, the roads to London having also been cleared the previous day. They were detaining me on a charge of driving while uninsured and taking and driving away a vehicle without the owner’s permission. The first charge was true, the second was a load of crap, but of course I couldn’t prove it unless they co-operated and got the kid up from Battersea. Normally people accused of such offences are allowed to await the vengeance of the law from the comfort of their own homes but I was taken first to Brixton, then after a couple of days to another place somewhere the other side of Croydon. I was told that if I applied for bail it would be opposed on the grounds that more serious charges were being prepared. I didn’t even ask for a solicitor.

A couple of guys interviewed me at the Croydon location. They were thick but gave off hints to me that they were some kind of super-coppers. I assumed them to be Special Branch. They knew a great deal about my activities over the previous six months. That didn’t surprise me. Forsythe or Toby could easily have told them. They never mentioned Pascale. Just Frank and Chris. They asked me to describe ridiculous, harmless things like where he went shopping, what cigarettes he smoked. They also asked about the party in Earls Court but they seemed to know about it anyway. Occasionally they threw in wild cards. Once they talked about a deal the US was supposed to have made with Guatemala before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The deal was to give British Honduras to Guatemala in exchange for the use of Guatemalan territory as a training camp for exiled Cuban terrorists. I was assumed to know all about this and was asked to comment on various parts of the story. I said that I thought that before Kennedy could make such a deal it would need to be sanctioned by the British Parliament. They didn’t seem to think that would have been necessary. Were they checking out my knowledge? Fishing a theory, or what? I never found out. This went on for nearly a week. I could handle it easily enough at first but, as the days went by, they began to get more aggressive. The nearest they got to Pascale was talking about the Algerian War. They asked me what I thought about it. I told them I didn’t think anything. Then they described the bombings and the details about what the victorious Maquis did to the Muslims who stayed loyal to the French, like making them dig their own graves and then eat their French decorations before shooting them, and other things. This was on the last day. As he recounted the stories to me, one of them, a ginger haired guy of about forty, began to lose his cool. He was a big bloke with bushy, wavy hair, but all well groomed and under control. As he reached the final climax of his tales of torture he reached across the table and grabbed hold of me, pulling me forward. Then he buried his fist in my face, breaking my nose. I fell backwards across the room knocking my chair over and the other guy came and picked me up so that Ginger could continue to work me over. He seemed to dislike me personally; the other guy was more of a functionary, carrying out his job description: ‘Assist in beating-up suspects.’ Suspects of what? I never found out. He hurt me badly. Not as badly as the last time but perhaps the essence of such treatment is the shock of pain as much as the pain itself. Nevertheless I was coughing blood and begging him to stop before he finally did leave off kicking me. In some strange way throughout it all I had the feeling that through this ordeal, and the previous one, I was somehow qualifying to join some elite club, of which Pascale was already a member. I wasn’t in her league of course, but at least now there was some shared experience. Not that I ever expected to see her again.

They left me alone in the room for about half an hour, then Forsythe came in. He didn’t look like someone who was happy in his work. He was edgy. By this time I’d got myself sitting at the table, sprawled out on it with my head resting on my arms. He sat down opposite me. As I realized who it was I slowly sat up and leaned back in the chair so as to focus better on him. The beating I’d just taken hadn’t been as bad as the previous, the one organised by Toby, not nearly. But as I hadn’t yet fully recovered from that, the cumulative effect was in excess of the violence meted out. They weren’t to know that - I bore no malice. Why was Forsythe nervous? Was he unhappy that I had seen him in a role so obviously subordinate to Toby? Did he make these trips to houses on the perimeter of London frequently?

“Hello Ronnie,” I said.

He lit a cigarette without offering me one. I didn’t bother asking. At last he spoke.

“Any complaints?”

“No.”

“You got off lightly. You know that don’t you? Some people don’t come back from the sort of journey you just made these last few months.”

“Just tell me, Ronnie, will you, who won and who lost? I don’t give a fuck, mind... It’s just out of curiosity.”

“The right people won Alex. That’s why you’re still around.”

“Is Pascale one of the right people?”

He looked at his nails and then at his silver cigarette case.

“If you don’t know the answer to that Alex, I really don’t think there’s much point in telling you.” That probably meant he didn’t know either.

“Is Frank one of the right people, Ronnie?” I didn’t manage the casual objectivity with these last two questions that I had with the first. They sort of came out through gritted teeth and probably gave the impression that I was trying very hard not to give: that of a bitter, broken loser.

“Frank’s a different kettle of fish, Alex. He’s made rather a fool of himself I’m afraid.”

“He’s a latent pederast with homicidal tendencies.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“...... And now he’s going to be crucified.” I said.

“Yes, that’s right. You see, you do know some things.... Yes, he and Chris are going to regret their little indiscretions I fear.”

“And how about your little indiscretions?”

“Mine?...... No Alex. I have nothing to regret.”

“Nothing, Ronnie?.... Or should I say SMOOTHYCHOPS?” It gave me some satisfaction to crack the bland poker face within the first minute of our conversation. “... I see you know what I’m talking about, Ronnie...... Guys with stars pinned on their chests really shouldn’t go around taking back-handers from loony foreign agents, even if they do claim to work for the CIA. It’s bad for the image - destroys public confidence.”

“Since you seem to know about it anyway, I’ll tell you...... That was an undercover job....”

“I suppose you gave the payments to a State Registered Charity and claimed tax relief.”

“It was a penetration assignment, Alex. My superiors were kept informed of all my actions.”

“Superiors?..... You mean Toby?”

“Be careful Alex. There are people in this place who regard Habeas Corpus as an act of irresponsible liberalism.”

“Don’t worry, Ronnie, I’m not making waves, I believe you. I just hope The News Of The World does too.”

“Frank was set up, Alex.... He was used. The shooting was a set-up. Frank and Sandie were both in on it. The only twist was that Frank thought the coon was going to fire a blank. A real bullet made it far more authentic, don’t you think.”

I was never going to win this debate.

“He tried to kill me you know.... In Tulse Hill.”

“Did he? I’m not surprised. Since he was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy killing you would be rather small beer.”