Caroline Minuscule (27 page)

He swung the cylinder open and emptied the cartridges on to the table. The six bullets were soft-nosed, with small slits at their points: homemade dum-dums. It was fortunate that Tanner had never had a chance to use them.

What else? There were two sets of keys. Lee also had a cheque book – from the Willesden Green branch of the National Westminster. There was a clump of paper handkerchiefs, which had come from Tanner's pockets; at least his cold was cured now.

The men had both worn chunky identification bracelets of eighteen-carat gold. Neither of the plaques had been engraved with the name of its owner, so perhaps they were merely bracelets. Hanbury should get one for himself and have
ALIAS
engraved on it.

Only the wallets were left. Tanner's contained a photograph of a tired-looking woman and a card, more dog-eared than the photograph:
Sonia. Private Modelling
and a London telephone number. Dougal pulled out the cash and tossed the wallet to one side.

Lee's was less revealing – much more cash, numerous credit cards, but nothing which was personal to the man.

Dougal put the empty wallets and the handkerchiefs in the stove and shovelled the rest back into the Harrods bag. The only exception he made was the cash – there must have been about 600 pounds – which he put with the money that Hanbury had sent him. He felt obscurely guilty, as if he had been reading someone's diary.

Boredom now threatened: Dougal could sense its approach before it arrived, like knowing that a harmless-looking cloud was not really drifting across the sky, but purposefully negotiating its way to a position which would block the sun's direct rays from the earth. His eyes followed the blue and aimless meanderings of the smoke from his cigarette. One wisp curled round his battered briefcase which stood on the chart table by the companionway.

On impulse, Dougal pulled the case over to the berth where he was sitting. He took out the photograph which had triggered off the whole affair. The print was crumpled and grubby by this time, but the clarity of that elegant, fluid script shone through the distortions of time and reproduction. Very pretty, he conceded, but not worth any more effort. The university and his thesis had retreated into the past at some unnoticed point during the last five days. The thought of going back to them was as unlikely as being seventeen again.

It was ironic that Caroline Minuscule had been the means of jolting him out of one era and into another. The future seemed crowded with potential novelties, whose outlines remained tantalizingly vague. Maybe he and Amanda would marry and live abroad for a while.

Where would spring be most enjoyable? Dougal toyed with a Tunisian villa for a moment, before rejecting it on the grounds that Amanda might find the Arab response to Western women rather irritating. Perhaps Greece would be better, despite the monotony of diet and the language barrier. And it would be pleasant to see what the country was like before the package holidays saturated it in summer.

It would be wise to think of the future as well . . . perhaps they could invest some of the money and become graciously cosmopolitan capitalists. Must ask Hanbury.

The dial of his watch flashed up at him as he stretched to slide the case back on the chart table. Midday. The others wouldn't be back for at least four hours. With the boredom had come its antidote: tiredness. He decided to take a nap. Even the coffee seemed to have made him sleepy. Kicking off his Wellingtons, Dougal slid fully dressed into the sleeping bag.

It smelt of Amanda.

If there were dreams floating through his mind, Dougal failed to notice them. He woke at half-past three, effortlessly gliding back to consciousness. The siesta had done nothing but refresh him; there was no trace of the muzziness which sleeping during the day usually produced.

For a second, he panicked: perhaps a shout from the shore had awakened him. He levered himself up on one elbow and peered through the grimy glass of the porthole. There was no one on the river bank, of course. Amanda and Hanbury wouldn't be back for at least half an hour.

He fought his way out of the sleeping bag, which had wound itself lovingly around his limbs, loath to let them go. His Wellingtons sprawled under the table like stranded amphibians. Even the rubber seemed dank as he pulled them on.

The stale taste of sleep clung in his mouth, so he ran a toothbrush quickly round his teeth. The heavily filled ones at the top right of his jaw responded with a twinge of pain. When had a dentist last seen them? He put a kettle on for some tea and stood watching it for a moment, scratching his head and wondering what to do while he waited.

Reading was the answer. Malcolm had a paperback copy of
Eminent Victorians
, whose pages he was systematically using as lavatory paper because he disapproved of Lytton Strachey. Cardinal Manning and most of Florence Nightingale had been flushed away, but Dr Arnold and General Gordon had so far survived intact.

But Dr Arnold failed to absorb Dougal. He merely succeeded in reminding him of Rosington School, a line of thought which naturally enough led to the events of the last few days.

Just before four, a movement on the bank caught his eye. Dougal tossed Strachey on to the chart table and hurtled up the companionway to the cockpit. As he reached the open air, a voice from ashore bellowed, ‘Ahoy!'

He swung round and stared towards the land. A sense of something wrong was crawling over him before he saw the squat figure gesticulating beside the stile, before he recognized who it was.

Philip Primrose.

Dougal rowed rapidly up the creek towards Pee-Pee. He had left his gloves behind and forgotten to fasten his jacket; he was dimly aware that the cold was cutting into him. What the hell was Philip doing here? Had Amanda and Hanbury been forced to alter their plans? Nothing, surely, could have gone really wrong. Underneath the questions, he felt deflated – expecting Amanda and getting Primrose was like finding two slices of cold Spam on your plate when your nostrils had been quivering to the smell of roasting beef for the past two hours. Maybe the others were up at the house . . . but why bring Madame Pee-Pee, for God's sake?

The bows of the dinghy grated on the mud. Dougal splashed into the shallow water, sending sludgy eddies perilously close to the top of his boots. He scrambled up the bank and found himself smiling at Primrose.

‘Hullo, Bill.' Philip had swathed his college scarf around much of his neck and face and topped the assembly with a brand-new deerstalker hat. Between the two, his nose protruded pinkly, giving him the appearance of an invalid rabbit.

‘Nice to see you, Philip,' replied Dougal with cautious politeness. How much did he know? ‘D'you want to come on board? It's freezing out here.'

‘Yes, that is, no . . . about the boat, I mean. As a matter of fact, I'm rather prone to seasickness. Do you mind?' Primrose sounded ashamed, as if he felt the failing was incompatible with his temporary character as a secret service agent.

‘Shall we walk up and down?' suggested Dougal, smothering his impatience. Primrose nodded, and they began to pace self-consciously along the line of the water.

‘Well,' murmured Pee-Pee (in case of hidden microphones?), ‘congratulations, old man. I gather that between you you've pulled off a pretty startling coup, by any standards.'

‘Not at all . . . and what we have done, we couldn't have managed without you.' Whatever it was that Primrose thought they'd done, Dougal tried to align his features into an expression of modest nobility.

‘Amanda came to see me around lunchtime, with that chap from You Know Where. No introductions were made, of course – better that way. Though, oddly enough, he did let drop that he believed we shared an alma mater. Small world, eh?'

Dougal, recognizing the unmistakable Hanbury touch, said that he supposed it was.

‘I didn't know they still bred that sort of mandarin type at Whitehall. Reassuring. Amanda said (when he was out of the room) that he reports directly to the minister, though that can't be news to you . . . it's a bit muddy here – shall we turn round?'

Primrose finally reached the reason for his presence. Something had come up, it seemed, which forced Amanda and Hanbury to go to London immediately. ‘Nothing to worry about. They said you'd understand.' Amanda had asked him to deliver a small package as soon as possible. He, Pee-Pee, had only been too glad to oblige a lady . . .

It was a thick manilla envelope with Dougal's name on the front in Amanda's looping handwriting. It reminded him of that other envelope, the one Hanbury had sent him.

Dougal thanked Primrose and said he mustn't keep him. ‘I'll have to attend to this at once, I'm afraid.' He waved the envelope. Perhaps the excuse would turn out to be true. Primrose opened his mouth, and then closed it as his compulsive curiosity about the envelope's contents was beaten back by his belief in the necessity to be discreet.

They walked back to the stable yard where Philip had left the Escort. Amanda, he said, had told him that he could have the use of the car for the rest of the fortnight it had been hired for. Wasn't that nice? The sky was darkening and he kept swivelling his eyes about, in the manner of an early Christian martyr, uncertain where the lions were.

Dougal tried to reassure him. ‘I think the danger is over now.' Then, realizing that Primrose was probably enjoying the drama, he added, ‘Mainly, that is. We can't be absolutely sure for a day or two.' That should keep him happy. It was possible, he thought, to argue that conning people could be an altruistic exercise, in some respects. Pee-Pee's memories of this business would certainly be happier than his own.

In the stable yard, they shook hands with becoming gravity.

‘I'll be seeing you back at college, I hope?' Primrose's voice sounded hoarse with all the whispering he had been doing.

‘Next week, probably.' Dougal's attention had wandered to his hand, which was feeling the envelope in his pocket. It could well contain a wad of money. But why? ‘We must all have dinner together when this is over. I'll be in touch.' Could an ally of Lee's have appeared from the blue to threaten them at this stage? The police?

He waved as the Escort jerked towards the drive like a mechanized kangaroo. Primrose's departure, though desirable on all counts, felt like a desertion when it actually happened. Dougal found himself running through the dusk towards the creek, as if he was fleeing from the desolation of Havishall Place to the company of the almost human
Sally-Anne
.

By the time he reached the river bank, his heart was throbbing in his chest, generating a painful warmth throughout his body.

His mind, however, was blank and cold. He rowed across to the
Sally-Anne,
trying to fill the emptiness with little, harmless thoughts: it was blowing up again tonight – he must check that everything was secure on deck; he might have that can of pheasant soup soon – hadn't they bought some claret in Ipswich?

In the saloon, he tossed the envelope on the table and busied himself with lighting the lamp, straightening the sleeping bag and pouring himself some brandy and water. Well, why not?

Then he slit his way into the envelope and extracted its contents, making sure that he missed nothing.

There were two piles of banknotes, secured with thick elastic bands, and a sheet of foolscap paper, folded once. Dougal lit a cigarette with exaggerated deliberation, as if he faced an audience of millions. He pushed the money to one side and opened the letter.

Amanda's familiar scribble covered most of the paper. He had never had a letter from Amanda before. It was written in biro – the familiar green Bic which she always carried.

Dougal read the letter once more. His mind understood its contents perfectly, but he still found it difficult to digest.
But this shouldn't happen to me
. So Hanbury had pulled one last surprise. Perhaps the man was addicted to the sensations which surprises caused, and continued to produce them out of habit, like a conjuror persisting in turning silk handkerchiefs into doves long after the audience had gone home.

But that ignored Amanda's part in it.

He gulped the rest of the brandy and poured some more into his cup. It dissolved, or at least weakened, the numbness inside. Tears pricked behind his eyelids, though he knew he wouldn't cry.

There was a terrible temptation, he thought, to wrap himself in a warm, smothering cloud of self-pity. Not only would it be easy, but it would also be the customary reaction for situations like this. The hard core of his mind refused to let him take the option. At least when he had found Gumper's body, he hadn't needed to bother about reactions – his body had decided that for him – he had been sick.