Our Game

On deck a fierce night wind was blowing. A few hardy passengers huddled among the benches. I staggered towards the stern, found a dark patch, leaned over the rail, and, in the classic pose of a seasick passenger, allowed first the gun and then the ammunition to slip into the blackness. I heard no splash, but I could have sworn I smelled the grassy smells of Priddy racing past me on the sea wind.

I returned to my cabin and slept so deeply that I had to dress in a hurry to reach the Mercedes in time and consign it to a multistorey parking garage in the docks. I bought a phone card and from a public call box dialled the number.

"Julie? It's Pete Bradbury here from yesterday," I said, but I had barely got even this far before she cut in on me.

"I thought you said you were going to ring me," she burst out hysterically. "He still hasn't come back, I'm still getting the answering machine, and if he's not home tonight I'm putting Ali in the car and I'm going out there first thing in the morning and—"

"You mustn't do that," I said.

A bad pause.

"Why not?"

"Is there anyone with you? Apart from Ali? Is there anyone with you in the house?"

"What the hell's that to do with you?"

"Is there a neighbour you can go to? Have you got a friend who will come round?"

"Tell me what you're trying to tell me, for Christ's sake!"

So I told her. I had no tradecraft left, no tactical aids. "Aitken's been murdered. All three of them have. Aitken, his secretary, and her husband. They're in the stone but on the hill above the store. He dealt in arms as well as carpets. They got caught in the crossfire. I'm very sorry."

I had no idea anymore whether she was hearing me. I heard a shout, but it was so shrill it could have been the child. I thought I heard a door open and shut and the sound of something crashing. I kept saying, "Are you there?" and getting no answer. I had a picture of the receiver swinging on its cord while I talked to an empty room. So after a while I rang off, and the same evening, having removed my beard and restored my hair and skin to something of their former colour, took the train to Paris.

* * *

Dee's a saint, she is saying from the window of my bedroom.

Dee took me in when I was down-and-out, she is saying as we stroll together on the Quantocks, her two arms locked round one of mine.

Dee put me back together again, she is reminiscing drowsily into my shoulder as we lie before the fire in her bedroom. Without Dee I would never have made it out of the gate. She's been mother, father, chum, the whole disaster for me.

Dee gave me back to life, she is saying, between earnest discussions of how we can be most useful for Larry. How to make music, love, how to say no . . . Without Dee I would have died. . . .

Until bit by bit my agent-runner's pride takes exception to this other controller of her life. I wish Dee forgotten and discourage further talk of her—this Dee of the fabulous empty castle in Paris, nothing in it except a bed and a piano—this Dee whose aristocratic name and address are lovingly illuminated in Emma's pop-up book: alias the Contessa Ann-Marie von Diderich, with an address on the Ile St.-Louis.

THIRTEEN

WET CHESTNUT LEAVES stuck to the cobbled pavement. This is the house, I thought, staring up at the same high grey walls and shuttered windows that I had pictured in my dreams. Up there in the tower is where Penelope sits, weaving her shroud, and remains faithful to her Larry in his wanderings, accepting no substitutes.

I had watched my back for hours. I had sat in cafes, observed cars, fishermen, and cyclists. I had ridden on the metro and in buses. I had walked through classical gardens and perched on benches. I had done everything that Operational Man could think of to protect his unfaithful mistress from Merriman and Pew, Bryant and Luck, and The Forest. And my back was clean. I knew it was. Though the experts say you never know for sure, I knew.

A wrinkled old woman opened the door to me. She wore grey hair knotted behind her and the coarse blue-black tunic of a menial. And wooden therapeutic sandals over lisle stockings.

"I would like to see the Contessa, please," I said severely in French. "My name is Timothy. I am a friend of Mademoiselle Emma."