The Corners of the Globe (28 page)

Max stood at the bar of the pub opposite the entrance to the British Museum, weighing his choices. He could linger there all evening and those choices would neither change nor improve. Appleby was not coming. His plans had gone awry. He had been waylaid. He might already be dead.

More likely he was alive, though – much more likely. The reason was the board-backed envelope containing photographic prints and negatives Max was carrying with him: the Grey File and its coded secrets. That was what Lemmer wanted above all to secure. And that was what must be denied him.

But what could Max do? Attack, his wartime instincts told him. Engage the enemy. Turn in the sky and swoop.

Appleby had spoken of a house in Pimlico where Political had planned to interrogate him. There was a good chance he had been taken there. Maybe Veronica Underwood too. Number 24 Glamorgan Street. Yes, that was the address Appleby had given. It was possible he had deliberately specified where it was with a contingency such as this in mind.

Max drained his whisky glass. He needed to find somewhere safe to lodge the negatives. It would be crazy to keep them with him. Once he had done that, he would not hesitate. They would not need to come looking for him. He would go looking for them.

Sam was relieved to find Morahan waiting for him in the church porch when he reached St-Germain l’Auxerrois. He had not relished the prospect of a lengthy vigil there. Morahan looked relieved to see Sam as well.

‘How do we know le Singe is going to turn up, Mr Morahan?’ Sam asked glumly as they set off.

‘We don’t.’

‘Or that he’ll be willing to help us if he does?’

‘We don’t.’

‘Or—’

‘Shut up, Sam, for God’s sake. You don’t need to tell me how desperate a throw this is. I quit Ireton Associates today and I’ve ensured Tomura is after my blood as well as yours. So, there’s a lot riding on this for both of us. But it won’t help to mention that every step of the way.’

‘Sorry,’ said Sam dolefully.

‘Me too. But sorrow’s next to gladness on the barometer dial of life, so they say.’

‘They do?’

‘Oh yuh. All the time.’

Max gave the porter at the Athenaeum the warmest of smiles as he requested an envelope in which to leave something for one of the club’s more senior members. The porter had explained Mr Brigham was abroad at present and offered to post the article on, but Max insisted it should await his return to London. ‘Or I’ll retrieve it myself first and deliver it in person. My name’s Maxted. James Maxted.’

‘Right you are, sir. I’ll make a note of that.’

L. Brigham, Esq
., Max wrote on the envelope.
For collection. Private and confidential
.

‘It’s rather important,’ Max said as he handed it over, accompanied by a generous tip.

‘Don’t worry, sir. It’ll be safe as houses here.’

‘I’m counting on it.’

And so, of course, he was.

A GROUND-FLOOR TENANT
grouchily admitted Sam and Morahan to the building after they had despaired of rousing the concierge and rung his bell instead.

‘
Pardon, monsieur
,’ Morahan said. ‘
Soukaris est un ami
.’ He pointed to Soutine’s
nom de résidence
on the mailboxes in the hall.

The man looked mildly surprised, but said nothing and padded back to his apartment in his slippers. Morahan was halfway up the first flight of stairs before his door had closed behind him. Sam hurried to keep up.

Morahan had the skeleton key he had used on his previous visit ready in his hand as they approached the door of apartment 17. But he had no need to use it. The latch was up on the lock. The door opened as he pushed against it.

‘We’re expected,’ he murmured, stepping cautiously inside.

‘Looks like it,’ Sam whispered, engaging the latch carefully as he followed Morahan in and eased the door shut.

Grainy pearly-grey light filled the bed-sitting-room. Curtains had been partly drawn across the half-open French windows. Sounds of the city – echoing voices, fluttering pigeons, barking dogs – drifted into Soutine’s tiny, white-walled haven. A hideaway, Morahan had called it, though to Sam it seemed less that than a retreat from a raucous and uncaring world. He had seen Soutine as a rogue and trickster, but, standing beside Morahan at the foot of the dead man’s bed and thinking of the end he had come to, Sam found himself admiring the last-gasp bravery of the devious antiquarian.

‘The message has gone from the mirror,’ Morahan said softly.

Sam looked in the direction he was pointing. The glass in the mirror was clean and clear. Le Singe had read the message and erased it. And he had left the door unlatched. They were there, as he wanted them to be. But where was he?

A movement, reflected in the glass, caught Sam’s eye. Morahan’s, too. They both turned round.

Le Singe was standing in the doorway leading to the balcony. He was wearing his normal rags and tatters of army uniform, but had put on over them a long, loose white tunic, intricately embroidered around the neck. Sam could not have explained why, but he had the impression the garment was a symbol of mourning. It certainly made him look more Arabian.

Le Singe was not smiling, as he had been when Sam had last encountered him. His expression was calm but sombre. And in his eyes there was the watchfulness a hovering hawk might bestow on its prey – intent, patient, all-perceiving. He flicked back the tunic to reveal a knife, held in a scabbard on a belt around his waist. He was armed and he was cautious. But he was there.

‘I left the message for you,’ said Morahan slowly, enunciating his words carefully, as if le Singe might be deaf and needed to read his lips. ‘And this man you know.’

There came from le Singe the faintest of nods. He was not deaf. But quite possibly he was dumb. Sam found it hard to imagine him speaking.

‘We are sorry for your loss,’ said Sam. From his pocket he took the photograph inscribed
Les jours heureux au Tunis
and held it up for le Singe to see. ‘His killers did not find this.’

Le Singe beckoned for Sam to place the photograph on the dining-table that stood against the wall. Sam stepped forward and laid it down, then stepped back.

Le Singe kept his eyes on them as he moved forward to collect the photograph. He glanced at it and kissed the picture. He slipped it into a pocket of his fatigues and nodded to Sam, as if in thanks, though there was nothing in his expression to indicate gratitude.

‘We need your help,’ said Morahan. ‘And you need our help.’

Le Singe gave that several stationary moments of thought before he bent down and picked up an object that had been propped against the wall behind him.

As he turned it in his hand, they saw it was a square of slate, framed in carved maroon-painted wood. From a pocket le Singe slipped a stick of chalk and wrote on the slate, before turning it for them to read.

WHO YOU?

‘My name is Schools Morahan,’ said Morahan. ‘And this is Sam Twentyman. We’re friends of James Maxted, son of Sir Henry Maxted. I think you knew him. I used to work with Travis Ireton, but I work with him no longer. We bought information from Soutine. Information you obtained for us. Something you found out is very dangerous. Maybe you know what it is. We don’t. But Soutine’s killers think we do. So, you and we are on the same side. We need to help each other.’

Le Singe’s searching gaze rested on them as he considered Morahan’s reply. Then he plucked a cloth from a fold of his sleeve, rubbed the slate clean and wrote another question on it.

WHO KILLED HIM?

‘Noburo Tomura, son of Count Iwazu Tomura of the Japanese delegation to the peace conference.’

Le Singe nodded, as if this answer only confirmed what he already knew.

‘The Tomuras are after you because they believe you know something that could damage them – maybe destroy them.’

Le Singe gave another nod. It seemed to be true, then. He did know something.

‘Will you tell us what it is? We can help you bring them down. We can help you avenge Soutine.’

Le Singe wrote on the slate again. NO REVENGE.

‘No?’

JUSTICE.

‘We’ll settle for that,’ Sam put in.

‘So we will,’ said Morahan.

More silence and more immobility. They were elements in which le Singe seemed to dwell quite naturally. Eventually, another word appeared on the slate: HOW?

‘Tell us what you know,’ said Morahan. ‘You can trust us.’

More deliberation, then: WHY?

‘Because Tomura is our enemy as well as yours.’

Something in le Singe’s expression told Sam that was not enough. He required more. Instinctively, Sam said, ‘Because
we
trust
you
.’

Le Singe nodded. That was what he wanted to hear. FOLLOW ME, he wrote. Then he pointed to Sam.

‘Me?’

Another nod. Le Singe laid the slate on the floor and stepped out onto the balcony.

‘Be careful,’ murmured Morahan.

‘You can count on that,’ Sam replied as he started after le Singe.

The boy was waiting for him on the narrow balcony, the still, grey evening air suspended around him in a world of roofs, windows, chimney-stacks, drainpipes and blank, steepling walls.

One drainpipe was several feet from the near end of the balcony. Le Singe kicked off his espadrilles and jumped up onto the balcony rail, then stretched out, grasped the pipe and climbed it with such speed and ease that Sam could not have said exactly how he had done it. But there he was, on the sloping roof above, looking down at him and beckoning. It might have been possible to reach the roof from the balcony using a ladder. But there was no ladder to be seen. And as soon as Sam tried to follow by the route le Singe had used, the full height he might fall into the courtyard below was revealed. The pipe was none too securely fixed to the wall and the rail was slippery. To manage the climb he would have to step into a void and hope to brace himself on the bracket holding the pipe before pulling himself up onto the roof. It was madness to attempt it.

‘Don’t do it,’ said Morahan, looking out at him from the doorway.

Le Singe went on beckoning. ‘He won’t believe we trust him if I don’t,’ said Sam tremulously. ‘And he won’t trust us.’

‘We can persuade him some other way.’

‘I don’t think so. I truly don’t.’

Le Singe looked down at Sam, his white tunic bellying in the gentle breeze. And Sam looked down as well, to the distant, cobbled surface of the courtyard below. Yes. It
was
madness. He could not do it. He should not do it. But then . . .

Hoping momentum would carry him where caution would not, Sam lunged forward, reaching for the bracket with his foot and the outward curve of the pipe, where it met the gutter, with his hand.

He reached both. But the crevice le Singe had found with his toes was inaccessible to Sam. His stolidly shod foot slid off the edge of the bracket into thin air, pulling his other foot off the rail behind him. He grasped the pipe, but his feet swung free. ‘Oh Christ,’ he cried out.

He was going to fall. He did not have the strength to pull himself up and round with his arms alone. He was going to fall. And it would be a fall to his death.

Morahan was on the balcony now, stretching out towards him. But the gap between them was too wide. It suddenly occurred to Sam that he had jumped into a trap – that le Singe was so suspicious of them he had lured him out there precisely so that he would fall. He looked up. And le Singe was smiling.

Then a rope-ladder, released by le Singe, unfurled itself from the roof, falling across Sam’s shoulder. He thrust one foot into a rung and clasped the sides, uttering a silent prayer of thanks. He was safe, even if far from secure.

He hauled himself up the ladder, ignoring the ominous creaking of the rope as it sagged and swayed. Le Singe grabbed him by his hand and wrist to help him scramble up over the gutter and onto the roof, where he fell on all fours, heart racing, lungs straining, nerves shredded. ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped. ‘Bloody sodding hell.’

He looked up then and saw le Singe climbing the slope of the roof to the wall behind it, above which stood a broad stack of chimneys. The rope-ladder was fastened to two hooks fixed to the base of the wall. Le Singe hauled the ladder back in and rolled it up. There were two other hooks sunk in the wall about six feet up, painted cream, like the plaster, so that they would not be noticeable from any distance.

Le Singe jumped and lightly grabbed one of the hooks, found the other with his foot and was suddenly up on the chimney-stack, fully fifteen feet above, grinning down at Sam. The fluidity and seeming weightlessness of the boy’s movement reminded Sam of monkeys he had seen at London Zoo. That was not quite it, though. There was a distinctiveness to le Singe’s agility that was beyond the simian. It was more like dancing than gymnastics – a celebration of something he could do that no one else could.

Le Singe nodded semi-formally to Sam, arms by his sides, then turned and vanished from view, stepping off and away on some roof-tree road to wherever he wanted to be. Like a bird taking flight, but without the faintest flutter of wings, he was gone.

‘Sam?’ Morahan called. ‘Where in hell are you?’

Sam raised himself uneasily, feeling more afflicted by vertigo now than when he had followed le Singe onto the drainpipe. Morahan’s head came into sight as he leant back against the balcony rail and craned his neck.

‘I’m here,’ said Sam, raising his hand feebly.

‘And le Singe?’

‘Gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Where we can’t follow.’ Sam pointed behind him. ‘Up there somewhere.’

‘But why? Why run away?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t think while I’m stuck up here.’

‘Well, crawl along till you’re above the balcony and drop down. Don’t worry. I’ll catch you.’

Climbing out and over the gutter, then letting go and trusting Morahan to break his fall without both of them toppling off the balcony, was terrifying, and Sam was shaking like a leaf by the end of it.

‘How can you have been in the Air Force if you’re afraid of heights?’ Morahan demanded, as they picked themselves up from the foot of the balcony rail, against which they had fallen.