A Perfect Spy

“It was trivial, he said. He was very young at the time. A boy still. He’d been running some low-grade Joe into Czechoslovakia. A frontier crosser, I think. Really small stuff. But there was this girl called Sabina who’d got in on the act and wanted to marry him and defected. I didn’t listen to it very clearly. He said if anybody picked through his file and came on the episode he’d never make it to the Fifth Floor.”

“Well that’s not the end of the world now, is it?”

She shook her head.

“Joe have a name, did he?” Brotherhood asked.

“A codename. Greensleeves.”

“That’s fanciful. I like that. Greensleeves. An all-English Joe. You fished the paper from the file and what did you do with it? Just tell it to me, Kate. It’s out now. Let’s go.”

“I stole it.”

“All right. What did you do with it?”

“That’s what he asked me.”

“When?”

“He rang me.”

“When?”

“Last Monday evening. After he was supposed to have left for Vienna.”

“What time? Come on, Kate, this is good. What time did he ring you?”

“Ten. Later. Ten-thirty. Earlier. I was watching News at Ten.”

“What bit?”

“Lebanon. The shelling. Tripoli or somewhere. I turned the sound down as soon as I heard him and the shelling went on and on like a silent movie. ‘I needed to hear your voice, Kate. I’m sorry for everything. I rang to say I’m sorry. I wasn’t a bad man, Kate. It wasn’t all pretend.’”

“Wasn’t?”

“Yes. Wasn’t. He was conducting a retrospective. Wasn’t. I said it’s just your father’s death, you’ll be all right, don’t cry. Don’t talk as if you’re dead yourself. Come round. Where are you? I’ll come to you. He said he couldn’t. Not any more. Then about his file. I should feel free to tell everyone what I’d done, not try to shield him any more. But to give him a week. ‘One week, Kate. It’s not a lot after all those years.’ Then, had I still got the paper I took out for him? Had I destroyed it, kept a copy?”

“What did you say?”

She went to the bathroom and returned with the embroidered spongebag she kept her kit in. She drew a folded square of brown paper from it and handed it to him.

“Did you give him a copy?”

“No.”

“Did he ask for one?”

“No. I wouldn’t have done that. I expect he knew. I took it and I said I’d taken it and he should believe me. I thought I’d put it back one day. It was a link.”

“Where was he when he rang you on Monday?”

“A phone box.”

“Reverse charges?”

“Middle distance. I reckoned four fifty-pence pieces. Mind you, that could still be London, knowing him. We were on for about twenty minutes but a lot of the time he couldn’t speak.”

“Describe. Come on, old love. You’ll only have to do it once, I promise you, so you might as well do it thoroughly.”

“I said, ‘Why aren’t you in Vienna?’”

“What did he say to that?”

“He said he’d run out of small change. That was the last thing he said to me. ‘I’ve run out of small change.’”

“Did he have a place he ever took you? A hideaway?”

“We used my flat or went to hotels.”

“Which ones?”

“The Grosvenor at Victoria was one. The Great Eastern at Liverpool Street. He has favourite rooms that overlook the railway lines.”

“Give me the numbers.”

Holding her against him, he walked her to the desk and scribbled down the two numbers to her dictation, then pulled on his old dressing-gown and knotted it round his waist and smiled at her. “I loved him too, Kate. I’m a bigger fool than you are.” But he won no smile in return. “Did he ever talk about a place away from it all? Some dream he had?” He poured her some more vodka and she took it.

“Norway,” she said. “He wanted to see the migration of the reindeer. He was going to take me one day.”

“Where else?”

“Spain. The north. He said he’d buy a villa for us.”

“Did he talk about his writing?”

“Not much.”

“Did he say where he’d like to write his great book?”

“In Canada. We’d hibernate in some snowy place and live out of tins.”

“The sea — nothing by the sea?”

“No.”

“Did he ever mention Poppy to you? Someone called Poppy, like in his book?”

“He never mentioned any of his women. I told you. We were separate planets.”

“How about someone called Wentworth?”

She shook her head.

“‘ Wentworth was Rick’s Nemesis,’” Brotherhood recited. “‘ Poppy was mine. We each spent our lives trying to put right the wrong we’d done to them.’ You heard the tapes. You’ve seen the transcripts. Wentworth.”

“He’s mad,” she said.

“Stay here,” he said. “Stay as long as you like.”

Returning to the desk, he wiped the books and papers off it with a single sweep of his arm, switched on the reading lamp, sat down and laid the sheet of brown paper beside Pym’s crumpled letter to Tom, postmark Reading. The London telephone directories were on the floor at his side. He chose the Grosvenor Hotel, Victoria, first and asked the night porter to put him through to the room number Kate had given him. A drowsy man answered.

“House detective here,” Brotherhood said. “We’ve reason to believe you’ve got a lady in your room.”

“Of course I’ve got a fucking lady in my room. This is a double room I’m paying for, and she’s my wife.”

It wasn’t any of Pym’s voices.