A Perfect Spy

Reading station resembled a low redbrick stable set at one end of a tawdry square. A poster in the concourse gave the times of coaches to and from Heathrow. That’s what you did, he thought. That’s what I’d do. At Heathrow you put up your smokescreen about planes to Scotland, then you hopped a coach to Reading to keep things nice and private. He considered the coach stop, then cast a long slow look around the square until his eye fell at last on the ticket kiosk. He wandered over to it. The clerk wore a small metal wheel in the buttonhole of his jacket. Brotherhood put five pounds in the tray.

“I’d like some change, please, to telephone.”

“Sorry, mate. Can’t do,” the clerk said, and went on with his newspaper.

“You could do it last Monday night though, couldn’t you?” The clerk’s head came up fast.

Brotherhood’s office pass was green with a red diagonal line drawn in transparent ink across his photograph. A notice on the back said that if found it should be returned to the Ministry of Defence. The clerk looked at both sides of it and gave it back.

“I haven’t seen one like that before,” he said.

“Tall fellow,” Brotherhood said. “Carried a black briefcase. Probably wore a black tie as well. Well spoken, nice manner. Had a lot of calls to make. Remember?”

The clerk vanished, to be replaced a minute later by a tubby Indian with exhausted, visionary eyes.

“Were you on duty here Monday evening?” Brotherhood said.

“Sir, I was the man who was on duty on Monday evening,” he replied warily, as if he might not be that man any more.

“A pleasant gentleman in a black tie.”

“I know, I know. My colleague has acquainted me with all the details.”

“How much change did you give him?”

“Good heavens above, what does that matter? If I elect to give a man change, that is my personal preference, a matter for my pocket and my conscience that has nothing to do with anybody.”

“How much change did you give him?”

“Five pounds exactly. Five he wanted, five he got.”

“What in?”

“Fifty p’s exclusively. He wished to make no local calls at all. I questioned him about this and he was entirely consistent in his answers. I mean where is the hardship in this? Where is the sinister element?”

“What did he pay you with?”

“To my recollection, he gave me a ten-pound note. I cannot be completely certain but that is my imperfect recollection: that he gave me a ten-pound note from his wallet, accompanied by the words ‘Here you are.’”

“Did the ten pounds cover his rail ticket too?”

“This was totally unproblematical. The price of a second-class single fare to London is four pounds and thirty pence exactly. I gave him ten fifties and the balance in small change. Now have you further questions? I seriously hope not. Police, police, you know. If it’s one enquiry a day, it’s half a dozen.”

“Is this the man?” said Brotherhood. He was holding a photograph showing Pym and Mary at their wedding.

“But that is you, sir. In the background. I think you are giving the bride away. Are you sure you are engaged in an official enquiry? This is a most irregular photograph.”

“Is this the man?”

“Well I’m not saying it is not, put it that way.”

Pym would take him off perfectly, thought Brotherhood. Pym would catch that accent to a tee. He stood at the barrier studying the timetable of trains leaving Reading station after eleven o’clock on a weekday night. You went anywhere except to London because London is where you bought your ticket to. You had time. Time to make your maudlin telephone calls. Time to write your maudlin letter to Tom. Your plane left Heathrow at eight-forty without you. By eight o’clock latest you had done your turnaround. By eight-fifteen, according to the testimony of the airport travel clerk, you had put up your little smokescreen about planes to Scotland. After that you hightailed it to the Reading-bound coach, pulled down the brim of your hat and said goodbye to the airport as quickly and quietly as you knew how.

Brotherhood walked back to the coach timetable. Time to kill, he repeated to himself. Say you caught the eight-thirty from Heathrow. Between nine- and ten-thirty there were half a dozen trains in both directions out of Reading but you caught none of them. You wrote to Tom instead. Where from? He went back to the square. In the neon-lit pub there. In the fish-and-chip shop. In the all-night café where the tarts sit. Somewhere in this dowdy square you sat down and told Tom what to do when the world ended.