Our Kind of Traitor (9 page)

*

And behind Dima’s raised forefinger, a different face, Perry is saying. All the fun had gone out of it. Out of his eyes. It was humourless. Rigid. He really
needed
us to be afraid. To share his fear. And as we stand there bemused – and, yes, afraid – the spectral figure of Tamara materializes before us in a corner of the tiny hall where she’s been standing all along without us noticing, in the darkest recess on the other side of the shafts of sunlight. She’s wearing the same long black dress she wore at the tennis match, and wore again when she and Dima spied on them from the darkness of the people carrier, and she looks like her own ghost.

Gail grabbed back the story:

‘The first thing I saw was her bishop’s cross. Then the rest of her, forming round it. She’d plaited and braided her hair for the birthday party and rouged her cheeks, and daubed lipstick round her mouth – I mean,
really
round it. She looked as mad as a bedbug. She didn’t have her finger to her lips. She didn’t need to. Her whole body was like a warning sign in black and red. Forget Dima, I thought. This is
really
something. And of course I was still wondering what her
problem
was. Because
boy
, did she have one.’

Perry started to speak, but she talked stubbornly through him:

‘She was holding this sheet of paper in her hand – A4 typing paper, folded in half – and holding it up to us. For what? Was it a religious tract? Prepare to meet thy God? Or was she serving a writ on us?’

‘And Dima, where was he in this?’ Luke asked, turning back to Perry.

‘Finally let go of my arm,’ said Perry with a grimace. ‘But not before he’d made sure I was focusing on Tamara’s sheet of paper. Which she then proceeded to shove at me. With Dima nodding at me:
read it
. But
still
with his finger to his lips. And Tamara really
possessed
. Both of them possessed, actually. And wanting us to share their fear. But of what? So I read it. Not aloud, obviously. Not even immediately. I wasn’t
in the sunlight. I had to take it to the window. On tiptoe: which shows you how much we were under the spell. And even
after
that, I had to turn my back to the window because the sunlight was so fierce. Then Gail had to give me my spare reading glasses from her handbag –’

‘– because as usual he’d left them behind in our cabin –’

‘Then Gail tiptoed up behind me –’

‘You beckoned to me –’

‘For your protection – and read it over my shoulder. And I suppose we read it, well, twice at least.’

‘And then some,’ said Gail. ‘I mean, what an act of faith! What were they doing
trusting
us like this? What made them think we were the
ones
suddenly? It was such a – such a bloody
imposition
!’

‘They didn’t have much choice,’ Perry softly observed, to which Luke added a wise nod that Yvonne discreetly copied, and Gail felt even more isolated than she had felt all evening.

*

Perhaps the tension in the under-ventilated basement was getting too much for Perry. Or perhaps – Gail’s thought – he was having an overdue fit of the guilts. He yanked his long body back into his chair, lowered his craggy shoulders to relax them and stabbed a forefinger at the buff folder lying between Luke’s small fists:

‘Anyway, you’ve got her text there in front of you in our document, so you don’t need me to recite it to you,’ he said aggressively. ‘You can read it for yourselves to your heart’s content. You have done so already, presumably.’

‘All the same,’ said Luke. ‘
If
you don’t mind, Perry. For completeness, as it were.’

Was Luke testing him? Gail believed he was. Even in the academic jungle that Perry was so determined to leave behind him, he was renowned for his ability to quote tracts of English literature on the strength of a single read. His vanity appealed to, Perry began reciting slowly and without expression:

‘Dmitri Vladimirovich Krasnov, the one they call Dima, European Director of Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia,
Cyprus, is willing negotiate through intermediary Professor Perry Makepiece and lawyer Madam Gail Perkins mutually profitable arrangement with authority of Great Britain regarding permanent residence all family in exchange for certain informations very important, very urgent, very critical for Great Britain of Her Majesty. Children and household will return in approximately one and a half hour. There is convenient place where Dima and Perry may discuss advantageously without risk to be overheard. Gail will please accompany Tamara to other area of house.
Is possible this house has many microphones
. We will PLEASE NOT SPEAK until all persons return from crab races for celebration.’

‘Then the phone rang,’ said Gail.

*

Perry is sitting upright in his chair as if he has been called to order, hands as before spread flat on the table, back straight but shoulders on the slope as he meditates on the rightness of what he is about to do. His jaw is set in refusal although nobody has asked anything of him that needs to be refused, except for Gail, whose expression as she stares at him is one of dignified entreaty – or so she hopes, but maybe she’s just giving him the hairy eyeball, because she’s not sure any more what facial signals she’s emitting.

Luke’s tone is light-hearted, even debonair, which is presumably how he wishes it to be:

‘I’m trying to picture the two of you standing there together, you see,’ he explains keenly. ‘It’s a truly
extraordinary
moment, don’t you agree, Yvonne? Standing side by side in the hall? Reading? Perry holding the letter? Gail, you’re looking at it over his shoulder. Both
literally
struck mute. You’ve had this extraordinary proposition thrown at you to which you’re not allowed to respond
in any way
. It’s a nightmare. And as far as Dima and Tamara are concerned, simply by not speaking you’re halfway to being co-opted. Neither of you, I take it, is about to storm out of the house. You’re pinned down. Physically and emotionally. Am I right? So from
their
point of view, so far, so good: you’ve
tacitly
agreed to agree. That’s the
impression you can’t help giving them. Totally inadvertently. Simply by doing nothing, by being there at all, you’re becoming part of their big play.’

‘I thought they were both totally barking,’ Gail says to deflate him. ‘Paranoid, the pair of them, frankly, Luke.’

‘Their paranoia taking what form exactly?’ – Luke undeterred.

‘How should I know? Deciding that somebody’s bugged the place, for openers. And little green men are listening.’

But Luke is more doughty than she expects. He comes back sharply:

‘Was that really so unlikely, Gail, after what you’d both seen and heard? You must have realized by now that you were standing with at least one foot in Russian crime. And you an experienced lawyer, if I may say so.’

*

A long pause followed. Gail had not expected to be locking horns with Luke, but if he wanted a fight he was welcome to one any time:

‘The so-called
experience
you refer to, Luke,’ she began furiously, ‘does
not
unfortunately cover’ – but Perry had already headed her off.

‘The phone rang,’ he gently reminded her.

‘Yes. Well, all right, the phone rang,’ she conceded. ‘It was a yard away from us. Less. Maybe two feet. It had a bell like a fire alarm going off. We jumped out of our skins. They didn’t, we did. A mossy, black, 1940s stand-up job with a dial and a concertina flex, sitting on a wobbly rattan table. Dima picked it up and bellowed Russian at it and we watched his face stretch into an arse-kissing smile that he didn’t mean. Everything about him was totally against his own free will. Forced smiles, forced laughter, false jollity, and a lot of yes-sir, no-sir, three bags full, and I’d like to strangle you with my bare hands. Eyes fixed all the time on batty Tamara, taking his cues from her. And the finger back in front of his lips, telling us no noises-off, please, all the time he’s talking. Right, Perry?’ – deliberately avoiding Luke.

Right.

‘So these are the people they’re afraid of, I’m thinking. And they want
us
to be afraid of them too. Tamara conducting him. Nodding, shaking her head, rouged cheeks and all, pulling a Medusa face for moments of mega-disapproval. Fair description, Perry?’

‘Florid, but accurate,’ Perry conceded awkwardly – then, thank the Lord, gave her a real full-beam smile, even if it was his guilty one.

‘And that was the first of many calls that evening, I rather believe?’ nimble Luke suggested, darting from one to the other of them with his quick, strangely lifeless eyes.

‘There must have been half-a-dozen phone calls in the time before the family came back,’ Perry agreed. ‘You heard them too, right?’ – for Gail – ‘And they were just for openers. All the time I was closeted with Dima, we’d hear the phone go and either Tamara would come yelling at Dima to answer it, or Dima would be jumping to his feet and hurrying off to take it himself, cursing in Russian. If there were phone extensions in the house I never saw them. He told me later that night that mobiles didn’t work up there because of the trees and the cliffs, which was why everyone called him on the landline. I didn’t believe him. I thought they were checking on his whereabouts, and calling the house on an old landline was the way to do it.’

‘They?’

‘The people who didn’t trust him. And he didn’t trust in return. The people he’s beholden to. And hates. The people they’re afraid of, so
we’ve
got to be.’

The people that Perry, Luke and Yvonne can know about and I mustn’t, in other words, thought Gail. The people in
our
bloody document that isn’t ours.

‘So this is the point where you and Dima retire to your
convenient place
where you can talk without risk of being overheard,’ Luke prompted.

‘Yes.’

‘And Gail, you went off to bond with Tamara.’

‘Bond my foot.’

‘But you went.’

‘To a tacky drawing room that stank of bat-piss. With a plasma
television playing Russian Orthodox High Mass. She was carrying a tin.’

‘A
tin
?’

‘Didn’t Perry tell you? In our joint document that I haven’t seen? Tamara was carting a black tin handbag around with her. When she put it down it clanked. I don’t know where women carry their guns in normal society, but I had a feeling this was her Uncle-Vanya-equivalent.’

If it’s my swansong, I’ll bloody well make the most of it:

‘The plasma TV took up most of one wall. The other walls were decked out in icons. Travelling ones. Ornately framed for extra sanctity. Male saints, no Virgins. Where Tamara goes, there go the saints, or that was my guess. I’ve got an aunt like that, ex-tart turned Catholic convert. Each of her saints has a different job. If she’s lost her keys, it’s Anthony. If she’s taking the train, Christopher. If she’s stuck for a few quid, Mark. If a relative is sick, Francis. If it’s too late, Saint Peter.’

Hiatus. She had dried: another lousy actor, washed up and out of a part.

‘And the
rest
of the evening, briefly, Gail?’ Luke asked, not quite glancing at his watch, but as good as.

‘Simply
scrumptious
, thank you. Beluga caviar, lobster, smoked sturgeon, oceans of vodka, brilliant thirty-minute toasts in drunken Russian for the adults, great birthday cake, washed down with health-giving clouds of vile Russian-cigarette smoke. Kobe beef and floodlit cricket in the garden, a steel band banging away that nobody was listening to, fireworks that nobody was watching, a drunken swim for the last chaps standing, and home by midnight, for a jolly post-mortem over a nightcap.’

*

A stack of Yvonne’s glossy photographs is making its positively last appearance. Kindly identify anybody you believe you may recognize from the festivities, says Yvonne, speaking by rote.

Him
and
him
, says Gail, wearily pointing.

And
him
too, surely? says Perry.

Yes, Perry,
him
too. Another bloody
him.
One day we’ll have equal opportunity for female Russian criminals.

Silence while Yvonne completes another of her careful notes and puts down her pencil. Thank you, Gail, you have been most helpful, says Yvonne. It’s randy little Luke’s cue to be brisk. Brisk is merciful:

‘Gail, I fear we should release you. You’ve been immensely generous, and a superb witness, and we can pick up on everything else from Perry. We’re very grateful. Both of us. Thank you.’

She is standing at the door, not sure how she got there. Yvonne is standing beside her.

‘Perry?’

Does he answer her? Not that she notices. She climbs the stairs, Yvonne her gaoler close behind her. In the plush, over-prinked hall, big Ollie of the cockney accent and foreign voices folds up his Russian newspaper, clambers to his feet and, pausing in front of a period mirror, carefully adjusts his beret, using both hands.

5

‘See you to the front door, at all, Gail?’ Ollie inquired, swivelling in his seat to quiz her through the partition of his cab.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘You don’t
look
fine, Gail. Not from where
I
sit. You look bothered. Want I come in for a cup tea with you?’

Cup tea? Cuppa? Cup of?

‘No thanks. I’m fine. I just need to get some sleep.’

‘Nothing like a nice kip to see you right, eh?’

‘No. There isn’t. Goodnight, Ollie. Thanks for the ride.’

She crossed the street, waiting for him to drive off, but he didn’t.

‘Forgotten our handbag, darling!’

She had. And she was furious with herself. And furious with Ollie for waiting till she was on her own doorstep before charging after her. She mumbled more thanks, said she was an idiot.

‘Oh, don’t apologize, Gail, I’m completely
worse
. If it was loose, I’d forget my own head. Are we utterly
sure
, darling?’