Leaning forward in a jack-knifed position with the grubby blanket kicked aside was the scrawny body of a man of some indeterminate age between twenty and thirty. He had long wavy hair to his shoulders and was wearing a grubby undervest and striped boxer shorts. Like an anatomical diagram, the injection sores followed the patterns of his veins along arms and legs. Against the bed-head there were a couple of pillows propped, where he'd been sitting up in bed until he'd taken a bottle of pills, retched a but not retched enough a and died. 'Is this what you brought me here for?' I said.
'I wanted you to see him,' said Churcher.
'Why?'
His face tightened with concern. 'Oh, no. I don't mean that, Bernard. You've nothing to reproach yourself about. Nothing at all.'
'Why then?'
'It was the quickest and most effective way of showing you that he couldn't possibly be what you thought.'
'Daphne Cruyer's lover, you mean?'
'A KGB probe ... or Daphne Cruyer's lover. You can see. He wasn't anything, Bernard. He was just a fragment of big-city flotsam.'
'When did this happen?'
I watched Churcher as he pulled the body back into the sitting position for long enough for me to see the cadaver's white drawn face and staring eyes. As he let go, the weight of the skull overcame the stiffness in the neck muscles, and the head rolled forward as if coming alive. 'Several hours ago, judging by the rigor.'
'Have you searched?'
'I did that while I was waiting for you.'
'I wouldn't like an intimate diary to turn up in the coroner's court, and Daphne Cruyer feature in its pages.'
'Nothing like that. I talked to him at length on Wednesday afternoon. No pressure, Bernard, I swear it. No need. He'd just shot up. He was quite lucid and rational but there was nothing behind his eyes, Bernard.'
'So why not Daphne Cruyer's fancy man?'
'Look at him! Look at the sores and the veins. Would any woman with half a brain in her head get into bed with him?' He twitched his nose as if smelling the air for the first rime. 'I met Daphne Cruyer once or twice, a couple of years back. I remember her at a cocktail party at the German Institute, or one of those freebie get-togethers. She was dressed in a long floral dress with beads and bangles and ballet shoes. Very artistic, isn't she?'
'I believe she is,' I agreed.
The body had continued to move and now, suddenly, it slid all the way to reassume its doubled-up position, like a man trying to touch his toes. Churcher saw it but didn't pause in his conversation. 'A very creative woman, I thought. Very imaginative.'
'She didn't make it up, Duncan.'
'I think she did, Bernard. A fantasy that she had to express, that's what I think. It helped her control her anger towards her husband perhaps. She didn't think you'd ever see him, did she?' When I didn't respond to this he said: 'Was she drunk? Was she angry? Was she jealous?'
'All three,' I admitted. 'Cause of death?'
'Take your pick, Bernard. He's got enough pills here to start a pharmacy. Half those bottles are empty; for all I know, he swallowed them all in one go. He was on crack and all kinds of filth. Even if he'd checked into a health farm yesterday morning, his life expectation wasn't more than a year.'
'So why didn't you tell me this when you first saw him?'
'I was checking his medical record, and that's a slow business. He walked out of a mental hospital about three months ago. You know how it is these days, no one wants to sign a commitment order and hold anyone. You could slice up some old lady with a chainsaw, and they'd still not put you under lock and key.' He looked around. 'Not that this one would ever do anything like that. He was polite and considerate and gentle with everyone. Doctors, patients, even the people living in this rat-trap said the same thing. The poor sod had just had all he could take.'
'They'll bring in a suicide verdict?'
'Suicide? Where do you draw the line, Bernard? In Russia they call alcoholics "partial suicides" and that's it, isn't it?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'Then you are lucky.' He looked at his watch. 'If you don't want your clean-up boys called in, I'd better get the law soon, Bernard. Have you seen enough?'
'So there was nothing in it, Duncan?'
'He went to the art classes. He didn't pay and it was warm and light: better an evening there than an evening here. Perhaps he wanted to meet people ... I don't know. He was lonely and broke and desperate. When I talked with him the other afternoon, he didn't even remember who Daphne Cruyer was. I asked him to tell me who was in the class with him; he could only remember three other students out of the twelve, and Daphne Cruyer wasn't one of them.'
'Poor Daphne,' I said.
'Perhaps she's lonely too, Bernard. You can't always tell by the way people seem from the outside. Loneliness is love spelled backwards, if you know what I mean. That same energy and power and passion that sends you sky-high into the rarefied stratosphere of love, when you are lonely drags you down to the sea-bed, and holds you there under a heavy rock until your lungs burst with misery.'
'Have you been on the booze?'
'No, I swear it.'
'Okay, bring the law in. I must get back to work. What about Hitler downstairs?'
'He'll be all right. I'll give the police a statement and he'll breathe gin all over them. They'll listen to what I tell them because I can save them a lot of work. Leave it to me. This is what I do for a living.'
'Any next of kin?'
'No one. The hospital tried to find the parents when he was first admitted, but he has no one, no relatives at all.'
'No worries on that score then,' I said.
'When I was tiny, I used to pray every night, asking God to make sure I died before my parents died. I just couldn't face the thought of being alive without them, you see.' Churcher was identifying with the dead youngster and it wasn't helping things.
'What about Belostok?' I said. 'Should he be told?'
'Don't blame yourself, Bernard. What you asked me to do made no difference. It would have happened like this even if Daphne Cruyer had never been born.'
'Belostok will be expecting him on Tuesday. Maybe Daphne Cruyer will be alarmed.'
'Bugger off, Bernard. This is what you're paying me to do and I'm bloody good at it. I'm not over the hill yet, no matter what they are saying about me.'
When I got back to Notting Hill Gate, VERDI and Werner were sitting in the dark. The curtains were wide open and they were drinking watery whisky and looking across London and watching the sluggish movement of the traffic along Bayswater Road.
There was enough light to see that VERDI was wearing a white roll-neck, and Werner was almost lost in the gloom wearing a black knitted shirt. They both looked as if they had adjusted to the idea of a long stay here. I was clinging to the hope that Dicky would find somewhere more suited to VERDI's incarceration so that I could escape from my role as jailer.
'One of us should turn in, Werner,' I said.
'Are you going to guard me?' VERDI asked with amusement.
'You sleep first, Bernie,' said Werner. 'You look worn out.'
He went into the kitchen and called: 'I'm making a sandwich and coffee. Anyone else?'
'No,' I said, but VERDI said he'd join Werner in the late-night snack.
Werner was still in the kitchen when it happened. I was in the front room with VERDI. I was kneeling on the carpet rummaging through my overnight bag to find my toothpaste.
The sound was no more than the sharp crack of breaking glass and a strangled cry from VERDI, the sort of gargling sound that is made by a man using mouthwash. I knew what it was. The glass was the window and the gargling the sound made as a man's heart explodes and he swallows several pints of his own blood.
Werner heard the glass break and recognized it too. He came rushing in from the kitchen. 'He's shot,' Werner said.
'Down! Stay still, Werner. Freeze. They'll be watching for movement.'
I was crouched over my zipper bag in the part of the room away from the window, and I remained down. 'Get right down. Don't try to look out of the window, Werner. Come to this side of the room and watch the door. Be very careful.' I waited while he did it, and then I scambled across the room on my hands and knees to look at VERDI.
'Is he dead?' said Werner from across the room.
'Yes,' I said. One look at his face was enough.
'He's moving.'
'Yes, but he's dead. It went right through the chest. Shit!' I said. I was putting my hand along his back to find the exit wound, and found a terrible gaping hole and a lot of blood still pumping out. His roll-neck sweater was saturated in it and it now covered my hands too.
'Could you see where it came from?'
'Don't go near the window.' I got my handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my hands. It didn't help much.
'But it's too dark to see.'
'A sniper,' I said. 'My fault. I should have thought of that. Someone out there on the rooftops with hand-loaded rounds, a sniper rifle on a bipod, and an infra-red nightscope.'
'You can't be sure how it was done.'
'It wasn't a lucky shot, Werner.'
'But you've been near that window. I've been near that window. But when they pull the trigger, they hit him. They must be able to distinguish him.'
'Yes. You don't set up that kind of hit and then leave it to chance which of the three men you get.'
'A nightscope.'
'This is a very expensive professional hit, Werner. Chest hit, with a round that strikes the heart and severs the spine. You couldn't do better than that if a surgeon had him on an operation table in the theatre.'
'I should have closed the curtains,' said Werner.
'Keep still and stay down,' I said. 'If it's some pay-by-result freelance, he'll be miles away by now. But if this is a KGB operation they may be ordered to wait and see what happens.'
'Even with all the lights off, they could see that white roll-neck as he came near the window?'
'Exactly, Werner.'
'But if we'd had the lights on we would have closed the curtains.'
'Life is full of maybes.'
'But even then ... How did they know which of us was wearing the white roll-neck? That's what I'd like to know.'
'Maybe they're going to pick us off, one by one.'
Werner gave a nervous laugh.
I got to the curtains and pulled them closed. 'Maybe they watched us arriving,' I said. 'Maybe someone told them.'
'Do you think they'll wait at the front entrance for us? Shall I phone for the clean-up team? We'll need a Special Branch man and a doctor, won't we?'
'Maybe. Let's just wait here a moment and get our thoughts together.'
'Is he still bleeding?'
'One shot, Werner. They must have figured that there would not be time enough for a second round. Flat trajectory. Hits the glass, spreads a little and takes him out. Even allowing for an element of luck, how many rent-a-guns do we know with that kind of expertise?'
'No one.'
'I'll find him, Werner, I'll find that bastard,' I said, expressing my anger more than my considered opinion.
'Is this the end of Operation VERDI?' said Werner.
'It's the end of a lot of things.'
21.
'Why have you got all this paper in your office?' Werner was not the first visitor to express surprise about the boxes that were stacked from floor to ceiling, scarcely leaving room for me to work.
'They can't think of anywhere else to put us,' I said.
'Who's up there on the top floor?' Werner asked nervously, and not for the first time. He went to the window and stood there looking out. The sky had become darker and darker, and now there came a rumble of distant thunder.
'Who isn't?' I said. We'd already been waiting almost two hours for the inquiry to send down for us.
'Number Two Conference Room,' said Werner. 'Not Bret's office. That shows they are really serious.'
'Bret is having his office redecorated. Haven't you noticed all the men in overalls, with ladders and transistor radios? They are stripping the paper off the walls, and putting in a false ceiling.'
'Don't you know who's up there?'
'I saw Frank arrive, and the D-G must be there too because I heard that bloody dog barking.'