unlikely. Nothing the man might discover in Scotland could be as
important as the information he already had.
Therefore Faber was getting out via the east coast. Godliman ran over
the methods of escape which were open to the spy: a light plane,
landing on a lonely moor; a one-man voyage across the North Sea in a
stolen vessel; a rendezvous with a U-boat off the coast; a passage in a
merchant ship via a neutral country to the Baltic, disembarking in
Sweden and crossing the border to occupied Norway ... there were many
ways.
The Yard must be told of the latest development. They would ask all
Scots police forces to try to find someone who had picked up a
hitch-hiker outside Stirling. Godliman returned to the living-room to
phone, but the instrument rang before he got there. He picked it up.
"Godliman speaking."
"A Mr. Richard Porter is calling from Aberdeen."
"Oh!" Godliman had been expecting Bloggs to check in from Carlisle.
"Put him on, please. Hello? Godliman speaking."
"Ah, Richard Porter here. I'm on the local Watch Committee up here."
"Yes, what can I do for you?"
"Well, actually, old boy, it's terribly embarrassing."
Godliman controlled his impatience.
"Go on."
"This chap pie you're looking for knife murders and so on. Well, I'm
pretty sure I gave the bally fellow a lift in my own car."
Godliman gripped the receiver more tightly.
"When?"
"Night before last. My car broke down on the A8o just outside
Stirling. Middle of the bally night. Along comes this chap pie on
foot, and mends it, just like that. So naturally ' "Where did you drop
him?"
"Right here in Aberdeen. Said he was going on to Banff. Thing is, I
slept most of yesterday, so it wasn't until this afternoon ' "Don't
reproach yourself, Mr. Porter. Thank you for calling."
"Well, goodbye."
Godliman jiggled the receiver and the War Office telephonist came back
on the line.
Godliman said: "Get Mr. Bloggs for me, would you? He's in
Carlisle."
"He's holding on for you right now, sir."
"Good!"
"Hello, Percy. What news?"
"We're on his trail again, Fred. He abandoned the Morris just outside
Stirling and hitched a lift to Aberdeen."
"Aberdeen!"
"He must be trying to get out through the east door."
"When did he reach Aberdeen?"
"Probably early yesterday morning."
"In that case he won't have had time to get out, unless he was very
quick indeed. They're having the worst storm in living memory up here.
It started last night and it's still going on. No ships are going out
and it's certainly too rough to land a plane."
"Good! Get up there as fast as you can. I'll start the local police
moving in the meantime. Call me when you reach Aberdeen."
"I'm on my way."
"Fred?"
"Yes?"
"We'll catch the bastard yet."
Fred was still laughing as Godliman hung up.
20TWENTY-ONE
When Faber woke up it was almost dark. Through the bedroom window he
could see the last streaks of grey being inked out of the sky by the
encroaching night. The storm had not eased: rain drummed on the roof
and overflowed from a gutter, and the wind howled and gusted
tirelessly.
He switched on the little lamp beside the bed. The effort tired him,
and he slumped back on to the pillow. It frightened him, to be this
weak. Those who believe that Might is Right must always be mighty, and
Faber was sufficiently self-aware to know the implications of his own
ethics. Fear was never far from the surface of his emotions: perhaps
that was why he had survived so long. He was chronically incapable of
feeling safe. He understood, in that vague way in which we understand
the most fundamental things about ourselves, that his insecurity was
the reason he chose the profession of spy: it was the only walk of life
which permitted him instantly to kill anyone who posed him the
slightest threat. The fear of being weak was part of the syndrome
which included his obsessive independence, his insecurity, and his
contempt for his military superiors.
He lay on the child's bed in the pink-walled bedroom and inventoried
his body. He seemed to be bruised just about everywhere, but
apparently nothing was broken. He did not feel feverish: his
constitution had withstood bronchial infection despite the night on the
boat. There was just the weakness. He suspected it was more than
exhaustion. He remembered a moment, as he had reached the top of the
ramp, when he had thought he was going to die; and he wondered whether
he had inflicted upon himself some permanent damage with that last mind
bending uphill dash.
He checked his possessions, too. The can of photographic negatives was
still taped to his chest, the stiletto was strapped to his left arm,
and his papers and money were in the jacket pocket of his borrowed
pyjamas.
He pushed the blankets aside and swung himself into a sitting position
with his feet on the floor. A moment of dizziness came and went. He
stood up. It was important not to permit oneself the psychological
attitudes of the invalid. He put on the dressing-gown and went into
the bathroom.
When he returned his own clothes were at the foot of the bed, clean and
pressed: underwear, overalls, and shirt. Suddenly he remembered
getting up some time during the morning and seeing the woman naked in
the bathroom: it had been an odd scene, and he was not sure what it
meant. She was very beautiful, he recalled.
He dressed slowly. He would have liked a shave, but he decided to ask
his host's permission before borrowing the blade on the bathroom shelf:
some men were as possessive of their razors as they were of their
wives. However, he did take the liberty of using the child's plastic
comb he found in the top drawer of the chest.
He looked into the mirror without pride. He had no conceit. He knew
that some women found him attractive, and others did not; and he
assumed this was so for most men. Of course, he had had more women
than most men, but he attributed this to his appetite, not to his
looks. His reflection told him he was presentable, and that was all he
needed to know.
Satisfied, he left the bedroom and went slowly down the stairs. Again
he felt a wave of weakness; again he willed himself to overcome it,
gripping the banister rail and placing one foot deliberately before the
other until he reached the ground floor.
He paused outside the living-room door and, hearing no noise, went on
to the kitchen. He knocked and went in. The young couple were at the
table, finishing supper.
The woman stood up when he entered.
"You got up!" she said.
"Are you sure you should?"
Faber permitted himself to be led to a chair.
"Thank you," he said.
"You really mustn't encourage me to pretend to be ill."
"I don't think you realize what a terrible
experience you've been
through," she said.
"Do you feel like food?"
"I'm imposing on you ' "Not at all. Don't be silly. I kept some soup
hot for you."
Faber said: "You're so kind, and I don't even know your names."
"David and Lucy Rose." She ladled soup into a bowl and placed it on
the table in front of him.
"Cut some bread, David, would you?"
"I'm Henry Baker." Faber did not know why he had said that: he had no
papers in that name. Henry Faber was the man the police were hunting,
so he should have used his James Baker identity; but somehow he wanted
this woman to call him Henry, the nearest English equivalent of his
real name, Henrik. Perhaps it did not matter he could always say his
name was James but he had always been called Henry.
He took a sip of the soup, and suddenly he was ravenously hungry. He
ate it all quickly, then the bread. When he had finished, Lucy
laughed. She looked lovely when she laughed: her mouth opened wide,
showing lots of even white teeth, and her eyes crinkled merrily at the
corners.
"More?" she offered.
"Thank you very much."
"I can see it doing you good. The colour is coming back to your
cheeks."
Faber realized he felt physically better. He ate his second helping
more slowly, out of courtesy rather than repletion.
David said: "How did you happen to be out in this storm?" It was the
first time he had spoken.
Lucy said: "Don't badger him, David."
"It's all right," Faber said.
"I was foolish, that's all. This is the first fishing holiday I've
been able to have since before the war, and I just refused to let the
weather spoil it. Are you a fisherman?"
David shook his head.
"Sheep farmer."
"Do you have many employees ?"
"Just one, old Tom."
"I suppose there are other sheep farms on the island."
"No. We live at this end, Tom lives at the other end, and in between
there's nothing but sheep."
Faber nodded slowly. This was good very good. A woman, a cripple, a
child and an old man could not constitute an obstacle. And he was
feeling much stronger already.
Faber said: "How do you contact the mainland?"
"There's a boat once a fortnight. It's due this Monday, but it won't
come if the storm keeps up. There's a radio transmitter in Tom's
cottage, but we can only use that in emergencies. If I thought people
might be searching for you, or if you needed urgent medical help, I
should use it. But as things are I don't feel it's necessary. There's
little point: nobody can come to fetch you off the island until the
storm clears, and when that happens the boat will come anyway."
"Of course." Faber concealed his delight. The problem of how to
contact the U-boat on Monday had been nagging at the back of his mind.
He had seen an ordinary wireless set in the Rose's living-room, and he
would, in a pinch, have been able to rig up a transmitter from that.
But the fact that Tom had a proper radio made everything so much
easier.
Faber said: "What does Tom need a transmitter for?"
"He's a member of the Royal Observer Corps. Aberdeen was bombed in
July 1940. There was no air-raid warning. Consequently there were
fifty casualties. That was when they recruited Tom. It's a good thing
his hearing is better than his eyesight."
"I suppose the bombers come from Norway."
"I suppose so."
Lucy stood up.
"Let's go into the other room."
The two men followed her. Faber felt no weakness, no dizziness. He
held the living-room door for David, who wheeled himself close to the
fire. Lucy offered Faber brandy. He declined. She poured for her
husband and herself.
Faber sat back and studied the couple. Lucy's looks were really quite
striking: she had an oval face, wide-set eyes of an unusual, cat-like
amber colour, and a lot of rich, dark-red hair. Under the mannish
fisherman's sweater and baggy trousers there was the suggestion of a
very fine, fullish figure. If she were to curl her hair and put on
silk stockings and a cocktail dress she might be very glamorous. David
was also good-looking almost pretty, except for the shadow of a very
dark beard. His hair was nearly black and his skin looked
proportion to his arms. Faber suspected that those arms might be
powerful, muscled from years of pushing the wheels of the chair to get
from A to B. Yes, they were an attractive couple but there was
something badly wrong between them. Faber was no expert on marriage,
but his training in interrogation techniques had taught him to read the
silent language of the body to know, from small gestures, when someone
was frightened, confident, hiding something, or lying. Lucy and David
rarely looked at one another, and never touched. They spoke to him
more than to each other. They circled one another, like turkeys trying
to keep in front of them a few square feet of vacant portable
territory. The tension between them was enormous. They were like
Churchill and Stalin, obliged temporarily to fight side by side,
fiercely suppressing a deeper enmity. Faber wondered what awful trauma
lay at the back of their hatred.
This cosy little house must be an emotional pressure-cooker, despite
its rugs and its bright paintwork, its floral armchairs and blazing
fires and framed water-colours. To live alone, with only an old man
and a child for company, with this thing between them ... it reminded
him of a play he had seen in London, by an American called Tennessee
something.
Abruptly, David swallowed his drink and said: "I must turn in. My
back's playing up."
Faber got to his feet and said: "I'm sorry I've been keeping you up."
David waved him down.
"Not at all. You've been asleep all day you won't want to go back to
bed right away. Besides, Lucy would like to chat, I'm sure. It's just
that I mistreat my back backs were designed to share the load with the
legs, you know."
Lucy said: "You'd better take two pills tonight, then." She took a
bottle from the top shelf of the bookcase, shook out two tablets, and
gave them to her husband.
He swallowed them dry.
"I'll say goodnight." He wheeled himself out.
"Goodnight, David."
"Goodnight, Mr. Rose."
After a moment Faber heard David dragging himself up the stairs, and
wondered just how he did it.
Lucy spoke, as if to cover the sound of David.
"Where do you live, Mr. Baker?"
"Please call me Henry. I live in London."
"I haven't been to London for years. There's probably not much of it
left."
"It's changed, but not as much as you might think. When were you last
there?"
"Nineteen-forty. "She poured herself another brandy.
"Since we came here, I've only been off the island once, and that was
to have the baby. One can't travel much these days, can one?"
"What made you come here?"
"Um." She sat down, sipped her drink, and looked into the fire.
"Perhaps I shouldn't ' "It's all right. We had an accident the day we
got married. That's how David lost his legs. He'd been training as a
fighter pilot ... we both wanted to run away, I think. I believe it
was a mistake, but it seemed like a good idea at the time."
"It has allowed his resentment to incubate."
She shot him a sharp look.
"You're a perceptive man."
"It's obvious." He spoke very quietly.
"You don't deserve such unhappiness."
She blinked several times.
"You see too much."
"It's not difficult. Why do you continue, if it's not working?"
"I don't know what to tell you. Do you want cliches? The vows of
marriage, the child, the war ... If there's another answer, I can't
find words for it."