The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 16

"I really ought to be on a train by nine."

"Well ... you come home with me. We'll have a bit of a think."

"I'm not sure I could face that room again."

"You silly b.u.g.g.e.r. I don't work from home, do I? Nah. I got a place in Henrietta Street. Let's nip along and put the kettle on. It's cosy. Really it is. Ever so."

How Sylvia would have despised the "ever so". It would be "common".

Over tea and ginger biscuits she heard him out the confusion of two Horsfields and how he really had nothing that Boris would ever want.

She said, "You gotta laugh, ain't yer?"

And they did.

She thought while they f.u.c.ked he could see in her eyes that she wasn't quite with him, but he didn't much mind.

Afterwards, she said, "You gotta do what I have to do."

"What's that?"

"Fake it."

George took this on board with a certain solemnity and doubt.

She shook him by the arm vigorously.

"Leave it out, Captain. I'd never fake one with you."

The best part of a week pa.s.sed. He was due to meet Boris that evening and sat at his desk in the day trying to do what the nameless wh.o.r.e had suggested. Fake it.

He had in front of him a "s.h.i.+pping Docket" for frying pans.

"FP1 t.i.tanium Range 12 inch. Maximum heat dispersal. 116 units."

It was typical army-speak that the docket didn't actually say they were frying pans. The docket was an FP1 and that was only used for frying pans, so the bloke on the receiving end in Singapore would just look at the code and know what was in the crate. There was a certain logic to it. Fewer things got stolen this way. He'd once s.h.i.+pped thirty-two kettles to Cyprus and somehow the word "kettle" had ended up on the docket and only ten ever arrived at their destination.

He could see possibilities in this. All he needed was a jar of that new-fangled American stuff, "Liquid Paper", which he bought out of his own money from an import shop in the Charing Cross Road, a bit of jiggery pokery and access to the equally new-fangled, equally American, Xerox machine. Uncle Sam had finally given the world something useful. It almost made up for popcorn and Rock'n' Roll.

Caution stepped in. He practised first on an inter-office memo. Just as well, he made a hash of it. "Staff Canteen Menu, Changes to: Sub-section Potato, Mashed: WD414" would never be the same again. No matter, if one of these yards of b.u.mf dropped on to his desk in the course of a day, then so did a dozen more. He'd even seen one headed "War Office Gravy, Lumps in."

He found the best technique was to thin the Liquid Paper as far as it would go, and then treat it like ink. Fortunately, the empire had only just died or committed hara-kiri and he had in his desk drawer two or three dip pens, with nibs, and a dry, clean, cut-gla.s.s inkwell that might have graced the desk of the a.s.s't Commissioner Eastern Nigeria in 1910.

And practice does make perfect. And a copy of a copy of a copy three pa.s.ses on the Xerox makes the perfect into a pleasing blur.

t.i.tanium was fairly easily altered to Plutonium.

A full stop was added before Range.

12 inch became 120 miles.

He stared, willing something to come to him about maximum heat dispersal and when nothing did concluded it was fine as it was. And 116 units sounded spot on. A good healthy number, divisible by nothing.

He looked over his handywork. It would do. It would ... pa.s.s muster, that was the phrase. And it was pleasingly ambiguous.

"FP1 Plutonium. Range 120 miles. Maximum heat dispersal. 116 units."

But what if Boris asked what they were?

Boris did, but by then George was ready for him.

"FP means Field Personnel. And I'm sure you know what Plutonium is."

"You cheeky b.u.g.g.e.r. You think I'm just some dumb Russki? The point is to what aspect of Field Personnel does this doc.u.ment refer?"

George looked him in the eye, said, "Just put it all together. Add up the parts and get to the sum."

Boris looked down at the paper and then up at George.

Whatever penny dropped George would roll with it.

"My G.o.d. I don't believe it. You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are upping the ante on us. You're putting tactical nuclear weapons into Singapore!"

"Well," George replied in all honesty. "You said it, I didn't."

"And they s.h.i.+pped in January. My G.o.d, they're already there!"

George was emboldened.

"And why not things are hotting up in Viet Nam. Or did you think that after Cuba we'd just roll over and die?"

And then he kicked himself. Was Viet Nam, either bit of it, within 120 miles of Singapore? He hadn't a clue.

Mouth, big, shut.

But Boris didn't seem to know either.

He pushed the Polaroid across the table to him. This time he took his hand off it.

"You will understand. We keep our word."

George doubted this.

And then Boris reached into his pocket, pulled out a white envelope and pushed that to George.

"And I am to give you this."

"What is it?"

"Five hundred pounds. I believe you call it a monkey."

Good G.o.d here he was betraying his country's canteen secrets and the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were actually going to pay him for it.

He took it round to Henrietta Street.

He didn't mention it until after they'd made love.

And she said, "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. That's more'n I make in a month," and George said, "It's more than I make in three months."

They agreed. They'd stash it in the bottom of her wardrobe and think what they might do with it some other time.

As he was leaving for Waterloo, George said, "Do you realize, I don't know your name?"

"You din ask. And it's Donna."

"Is that your real name?"

"Nah. 'S my workin' name. Goes with my surname. Needham. It's like a joke. Donna Needham. Gett.i.t?"

"Yes. I get it. You're referring to men."

"Yeah, but you can call me Janet if you like. That's me real name."

"I think I prefer Donna."

It became part of the summer. Part of the summer's new routine.

He would ring home about once a week and tell Sylvia he would be working late.

"The DDT to the DFC's in town. The bra.s.s want me in a meeting. Sorry, old thing."

Considering that she had been married to a serving army officer for twenty years before she met George, Sylvia had never bothered to learn any army jargon. She expected men to talk b.o.l.l.o.c.ks and she paid it no mind. She accepted it and dismissed it simultaneously.

George would then keep an appointment with Boris in the Berwick Street caff, sell his country up the Swanee, and then go round to the flat in Henrietta Street.

Even as his conscience atrophied, or quite possibly because it atrophied, love blossomed. He was absolutely potty about Donna and told her so every time he saw her.

Boris didn't use the Berwick Street caff every time, and it suited both to meet at Kempton Park racecourse on the occasional Sat.u.r.day, particularly if Sylvia had gone to a whist drive or taken herself off shopping in Kingston-upon-Thames. Five bob each way on the favourite was George's limit. Boris played long shots and made more than he lost. It was, George thought, a fair reflection on both their characters and their trades.

As the weeks pa.s.sed, George doctored more dockets, pocketed more cash although he never again collected 500 in one go (Boris explained that this had been merely to get his attention), every meeting resulted in his treachery being rewarded with 100 or 200.

Some deceptions required a bit of thought.

For example he found himself staring at a docket for saucepans he had s.h.i.+pped to Hong Kong from the makers in Lancas.h.i.+re.

SP3 PRESTIGE Copper-topped 6 inch. 250 units.

Prestige was probably the best-known maker of saucepans in the country. He couldn't leave the word intact it was just possible that even old Boris had heard of them.

But once contemplated, his liar's muse came to his rescue and it was easily altered to read ...

FP3 P F T Cobalt-tipped 6 inch. 250 units.

He'd no idea what this might mean, but, once in the caff with two cups of frothy coffee in front of them, as ever, Boris filled in most of the blanks.

Yes. FP meant what it had always meant. He struggled a little with P F T, and George waited patiently as Boris steered himself in the direction of Personal Field Tactical, and as he put that together with cobalt-tipped his great Russian self-righteousness surfaced with a bang.

"You really are a bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds aren't you? You're fitting hand-held rocket launchers with missiles coated with spent uranium!"

Oh, was that it? George knew cobalt had something to do with radioactivity, but quite what was beyond him.

"Armour-piercing cobalt-tipped sh.e.l.ls? You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You utter fockin' b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Queensberry Rules, my Bolshevik a.r.s.e!"

Ah ... armour-piercing, that was what they were for. George hadn't a clue and would have guessed blindly had Boris asked.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

After which outburst Boris slipped him a hundred quid and called it a long un.

Midsummer, George got lucky. He was running out of ideas, and somebody mentioned that the Army had American-built ground-to-air missiles deployed with NATO forces in Europe. A truck-mounted launcher that went by the code-name of Honest John. It wasn't exactly a secret and there was every chance Boris knew what Honest John was.

It rang a bell in the great canteen of the mind. A while back, he was almost certain, he had s.h.i.+pped fifty large stewpots out to Aden, bought from a firm in Waterford called Honett Iron. It was the shortest alteration he ever made, and lit the shortest fuse in Boris.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" he said yet again.

And then he paused and in thinking came close to unravelling George's skein of lies. George had thought to impress Boris with a fake docket for a missile that really existed, and it was about to blow up in his face.

"Just a minute. I know this thing, it only has a range of fifteen miles. Who can you nuke from Aden? It doesn't make sense. Every other country is more than fifteen miles away. There's nothing but fockin dyesert within fifteen miles of Aden."

George was stuck. To say anything would be wrong, but this was one gap Boris's fertile imagination didn't seem willing to plug.

"Er ... that depends," said George.

"On what?"

"Er ... on ... on what you think is going on in the er ... 'fockin dyesert'."

Boris stared at him.

A silence screaming to be filled.

And Boris wasn't going to fill it.