The Long Room (14 page)

Later that Friday night a blizzard swept in from the west. That night eleven people died when a bomb exploded in a pub in Wolverhampton, not far from a Territorial Army training base. Four of the dead were soldiers; the others were civilians unconnected to the base. One of them had been celebrating her engagement. There were serious injuries to people who survived.

As he didn’t listen to the radio news on Saturday morning, Stephen did not know about the bomb until he saw a news vendor’s billboard at the station. He had left his flat before first light to get to Battersea in time for the second stage of his reconnaissance. He had made his plans. He is methodical and he is well trained, although this morning he has a pounding headache. Perhaps he’s coming down with flu.

The cold caught him by surprise. It was so intense that it had body to it; it filled his mouth and probed the nerve-endings of his teeth. When he got off the train at Battersea the snow had turned to sleet. Realistically, even in the half-light, he could not expect to hide for very long within the shrubbery of the park, nor loiter inconspicuously on the street: a solitary figure in the freezing rain. No, his intention was to be strolling past Helen’s mansion block at exactly the same time as she was leaving for the carol concert. She had said that it began at 10.00. She normally allows three-quarters of an hour for the journey from home to school. She is the music teacher; obviously she will
have to be there well before the event is due to start. She is conscientious; she will want to get to the school by 9.15. It was now just after 7.30. He had about an hour to kill, but found a convenient workmen’s café near the station. If he can be outside the mansion block by 8.25, he will see Helen again.

He was right, and he was lucky. The first time he walked up the street past the entrance there was no one there at all. At the far end of the street he stopped and, for the benefit of anyone who might be spying on him from a window, pretended to consult the A-Z. His umbrella would afford him some protection from busybodies twitching their lace curtains. He turned back down the street and as he was approaching it on the opposite side he saw that the main door of the mansion block was opening.

Three people emerged and walked down the shallow flight of steps together. One was the lovely woman in the pale coat; the other two were men. A man of average height in a hooded yellow waterproof; a much taller man in a green waxed jacket, bare-headed, his thick hair almost black. Stephen knew him instantly as the man who shared a room with Rollo Buckingham, and the shock of that recognition stopped his breath.

It was more than ever crucial now that he should not be seen. He couldn’t stand there on the pavement staring, but neither could he swivel on his heel and stride off in the opposite direction. There was nothing for it but to tilt his umbrella at an angle like a shield and march right past the three of them, with his head bent and his face averted. When he reached the corner of the street he dared a backwards glance; both men were unlocking bicycles that had been chained to the railings by the flats. Helen was standing near them, struggling to put up a
red umbrella. Dangerous though he knew it was, Stephen was desperate for a closer look. He ducked into the portal of the next block, where it could seem that he was ringing a doorbell.

It was an inspired move. Raised above the level of the street, sheltered by the roofed portal and in a feigned attitude of waiting, Stephen could observe all three as they reached the corner. The two men were wheeling their bikes. At the corner Helen gave a little wave, crossed the main road and went towards the gate into the park. One or other of the men called after her but a passing lorry drowned their voices out. Both then swung their legs over their crossbars and rode off side-by-side in the direction of Albert Bridge.

Stephen watched Helen walk away from him. He was in no condition to follow her or anybody else through the wintry park. The thunderbolt was having a serious effect, now that the immediate risk of being caught was past. He needed to wait a while until his nerves were steady.

How could he have failed to identify
PHOENIX
weeks ago? He must have seen him in that room a dozen times or more. It is true that he only delivers reports by hand when they may be urgent and that when he does, he often finds Rollo there alone, but even so, how could he have been so blinkered and obtuse?

Could he be going mad? The horror of that thought is an icy tidal wave crashing down upon him. But no, of course he’s not, he is as sane as he has ever been, and in full possession of his wits. The wave recedes a little. And then it dawns on Stephen that he has never heard the dark man speak. Or, if he has, then nothing more than a few clipped and muttered words. In all these weeks he has been silent to the point of rudeness, rarely acknowledging Stephen with anything more forthcoming than a nod.

But that does not explain the other staggering fact. Rollo Buckingham is conducting an investigation in the very room he shares with that investigation’s target. Can that actually be true? It seems absurdly cavalier. And yet, now that Stephen comes to think of it, nothing is ever said in that room or in any other that would give away the game. Generalities are permissible; specifics are forbidden; no names, no pack drill; we are all too well aware that careless talk costs lives. He recalls Rollo’s furious expression when he thought that Stephen was about to blurt out some details. No wonder then that Rollo is so insistent on the Cube. Christ almighty, this is a stroke of genius on Rollo’s part. What better way to hide this most delicate investigation and to lull the suspect into a false sense of safety than by investigating him under his own nose? Not in a million years would Jamie Greenwood dream that Rollo had any idea what he was up to.

The sleet had thickened once again to snow. An old man with a dog was walking towards the doorway in which Stephen was sheltering; it was time to go. Feeling a bit safer now, he decided to take a closer look at the entrance to Helen’s block: it could be that there were names beside the doorbells on their polished plaque of brass. He’d like to know which flat is hers and in fact may need to, if he is ever to tail
PHOENIX
or carry out any other investigations of his own.

He examined the building from the street. At its west gable there was a high wooden gate in the wall, which must lead to a yard or narrow garden. Opposite the block was the brick slab of the next; behind both blocks were ordinary terraced houses. The street was not very long. Like others in this part of London, its name echoed an imperialist past: Soudan, Khartoum,
Kandahar and Khyber; shades of Englishmen fresh off the playing fields of Eton, ruling single-handed over tracts of land that were a hundred times the size of their home counties; imposing their own codes on alien frontiers. What were those late Victorian builders dreaming of, when they gave their new streets those exotic names? Peshawar? Maybe, Stephen thought, through the fog of his fear and his thumping headache, these were actually the sites of battles. Dead men then, those young Etonians, in their foreign fields that are no longer England? Street names like war memorials, in a city that is not the one the young men knew, in a country that has no idea where it’s going and is caught like a dog with its head in railings, railings just like the ones that fence off the park before him, a bulldog facing backwards, sick with sentiment and nostalgia. If Jamie Greenwood had been born half a century earlier he’d have been one of those young rulers. And what are they doing now, these men, the Buckinghams and Greenwoods who were born too late? They’re still fighting their tribal wars against the
VULCANS
and the
ODIN
s, the trade unionists, the miners, the Irish and the foreigners, the whole mishmash whose voices, aspirations and lost causes fill Stephen’s waking hours.

To Stephen’s disappointment there were no names against any of the doorbells. He carefully inspected the side elevation of the building to see if he could tell how the flats were laid out but, as it was evident from the doorbells that a few were subdivided, it was not possible to ascertain which windows belonged where on any floor. He could hear the passing traffic from the Greenwoods’, which must mean their sitting room faced the main road and the park. That was good to know. He was right
to think of Helen gazing out at grass and trees, green thoughts in a green shade, oasis in the city. Whenever she opened her windows she would scent the salt breath of the distant river. There were seventeen flats in this section of the block, including subdivisions. There was an entry phone. As no one had ever mentioned a lift or many stairs, it was a reasonable assumption that Helen’s flat was on the first or second floor. Stephen knew that it couldn’t be on the ground floor or in the basement because, if it were, there’d be a different quality of sound.

The main door did not yield when Stephen pushed it, and its large brass knob was purely ornamental. That came as no surprise; he’d seen that Helen used a key. He crouched down to the level of the letterbox plate, and pushed it open to peer inside. It was dark in there, and hard to make out anything but the foot of a flight of stairs. And the lower half of someone running down them.

Stephen dropped the letterbox plate quickly and stepped backwards but there was no time to retreat; the person on the other side was already opening the door. It was a young woman with short brown hair, wearing a navy quilted jacket and green wellington boots. Seeing Stephen hovering on the doorstep, she nodded to him politely and stood aside, holding the door open. ‘Er, thanks,’ Stephen mumbled, sidling past her, his wet umbrella still unfurled. Now he was inside, and the door was swinging shut behind him.

How could that silly girl be sure he was neither a burglar nor a rapist? Were all of Helen’s neighbours so careless of her safety? The sooner he could get her away from here the better. Meanwhile it was deeply thrilling to be in the place where Helen lived. For the time being he shut his mind to the carnal
reality of
PHOENIX
and to the disturbing solidity that gave to images that before were clouded. That reality would have to be confronted – the man is Helen’s lover, Helen’s husband – but Stephen had not the strength to face it now.

The entrance hall was clean and tidy. There were the doors to flats 38 and 39, numbered pigeonholes, and an old-fashioned lift of the kind with double folding grilles. The stairs were carpeted, the hall floor made of patterned tiles. For the moment it was quiet.

Stephen quickly checked the contents of the pigeonholes. There must be a porter or a caretaker in this mansion block: in other buildings that Stephen had seen old letters and bills and unwanted papers piled up in dusty drifts, but here the mail had all been sorted. Nothing bore the Greenwood name. Their mail, of course, must have been read before it got to them, thought Stephen, recalling his one training visit to that branch of Technical where two women sat with their trays of letters and a steaming kettle.

He dragged open the sliding metal gate into the lift. Six floors. It did not go to a basement. It was exactly like a cage. He closed it again; if anyone should summon it, he would have more than enough warning from the creak of metal. He’d take the stairs and make his way up slowly.

On the first landing there were three flats: 40a and 40b, and 41. There was a window that looked out over the side-street and across to the opposite block. The pattern was the same on every floor, except that on some there were the two original flats, and at the top of the building there were four. All of them had identical front doors. Ordinary wooden doors, unremarkable, except that one belonged to Helen. He rubbed his fingers over
every handle as he passed, hedging his bets; her fingers would have been on one. From behind a door on the third floor he heard a baby crying and stopped to listen: is it a visiting baby or a new one? Had he heard a child here before? A dog, yes; there was a dog that barked sometimes but it was making no noise now. Was there the scent of Helen? On each landing he sniffed the air but it was difficult to tell, in a place where there were smells of breakfasts – coffee, bacon – and the smell of snow. But least he knew that he was stepping where she stepped, his hand was on the banisters that her hand touched every day, he was breathing where she breathed. Oh Helen.

In the time that he was there, he saw no one else. Could he have stayed there on the stairs and waited? But waited for what? Imagine if Helen were to come back home and find him sitting on the second flight, barring the way to her front door … No, this was not the right time yet. He wouldn’t know what to say to her; not yet. If he made a move too soon, he would scare her off. He’d rather sever his right hand than cause her to be frightened. When the time comes he will approach her gently, as he would a shy, wild creature – a kitten or a fawn – step by slow and careful step, holding out a coaxing hand until he gains her trust. That time will surely not be long; not now that he is making such good progress; he must enforce patience on himself.

But what instead should he do now? It’s Saturday; it’s snowing; his mother will be expecting him to take her to the shops. Helen will still be at the carol service – perhaps he might slip in at the back, seeming like a father who is late? Except he doesn’t know exactly where it’s being held. What is
PHOENIX
doing now? It’s surprising that he left the flat so early when he
doesn’t have to be at Harvey Nicks until about eleven. Maybe even eleven-thirty. Who was the other man? A neighbour? Wouldn’t the service be followed by coffee or something? Mince pies. Harvey Nicks. It took him a moment to work out what Helen meant when she said that. It’s funny, the familiar terms that people use, almost a sort of code. Outsiders try to adopt them but often get them wrong – like Alberic, with his quaint use of words. Stephen squirms when Charlotte chatters on about H. A. Rods, but for all he knows that’s what everyone who’s in the know calls it. He can’t take the risk of being seen this morning in Harvey Nichols himself, now that he has recognised Jamie Greenwood. He really must stay hidden from now on. So anyway. There’s nothing he can do here any more; he might as well go home and get the car and drive to Didcot where his mother waits.