A Perfect Spy

The committee rooms are in darkness. Go.

* * *

The way is clear but Pym is too old a hand to make straight for his target. Time spent on reconnaissance is never time wasted, Jack Brotherhood used to say. I will fight my way to the heart of the enemy and earn her. He begins in the hall, affecting to read the day’s notices. The ground floor is by now deserted. Mattie’s filthy office is empty, the front door chained. He begins his slow ascent. Two doors past his own on the next floor lies the residential lounge. Pym opens the door and smiles in. Syd Lemon and Morrie Washington are playing a four of snooker against a couple of dear old friends of Mattie Searle who look like horse thieves but they could be sheep rustlers. Syd wears his hat. Two locally obtained Lovelies are chalking cues and dispensing comfort. The mood is fraught.

“What are you playing?” says Pym as if hoping for a game.

“Polo,” says Syd. “Piss off, Titch, and don’t be funny.”

“I meant how many frames.”

“Best of nine,” says Morrie Washington.

Syd misses his shot and swears. Pym closes the door. They are settled. No danger there for at least an hour. He continues his patrol. Another flight upwards the atmosphere tightens, as it will in any secret building. Here is the quiet room where invited guests may kick off their shoes and take part in a relaxing hand of poker with Our Candidate and his circle. Pym enters without knocking. At a table strewn with cash and brandy glasses, Rick and Perce Loft are locked in a sharp piece of betting with Mattie Searle. The pot is a stack of petrol coupons, which in the court are preferred as hard currency. Mattie raises Rick and Rick sees him. Rick looks on with forbearance while Mattie scoops the pool.

“They tell me you and Colonel Barker had a crack at Little Kimble this morning, old son.”

I forget exactly why Rick called Judy Colonel. I have an idea it was a reference to a celebrated lesbian who had been involved in a court case. Whatever the reason, Pym did not care for it.

“The boy had them kissing the ground, Rickie,” Perce Loft confirms.

“Not the only thing he’s been kissing, if you ask me,” says Rick and everybody laughs because it is Rick’s joke.

Pym leans in for the good-night bear-hug and hears Rick sniff his cheek, which has Judy’s smell on it.

“Just you keep that old mind of yours on the election, son,” he says, patting the same cheek in warning.

Down the corridor lies Morrie Washington’s publicity department which doubles as disinformation section. Cases of whisky and nylons are stacked against the wall waiting to pave the way to the last electoral favours. It was from Morrie’s desk that the baseless rumours went out regarding the Tory Candidate’s support of Sir Oswald Mosley, and the Labour Candidate’s overaddiction to his pupils. Springing the locks with his dividers, Pym flicks quickly through the drawers. One bank statement, one set of indecent playing cards. The statement is in the name of Mr. Morris Wurzheimer and is overdrawn by a hundred and twenty pounds. The playing cards would be impressive if Judy’s reality did not eclipse them. Relocking everything neatly after him Pym climbs halfway up the last flight, then hovers listening to Mr. Muspole murmuring on the telephone. The top floor is the sanctum. It is safe room, cypher room and operations centre combined. At the end of the corridor lie Our Candidate’s State Apartments which not even Pym has penetrated so far, for Sylvia now spends erratic hours in bed having headaches or trying to grill herself brown with a mysterious hand lamp she has bought from Mr. Muspole. He can therefore never be sure of a safe run. Next door resides the so-called Action Committee, where big money and support are mustered and promises traded. What promises is still half a mystery to me, though Syd once spoke of a plan to fill the ancient harbour with cement and make a carpark of it, to the pleasure of many influential contractors.

Abruptly Mr. Muspole rings off. Without a sound, Pym swivels on his heel and prepares to beat an orderly retreat down the stairs. He is saved by the whirr of Mr. Muspole dialling again. He is talking to a lady, asking tender questions and purring at the answers. Muspole can carry on like this for hours. It is his little pleasure.