The Human Factor Part 21

He said, 'I hadn't expected this to happen.'

'Yes. I remember now.'

'It opened my eyes,' Daintry said. 'I saw what they'd been up to.'

'They jumped too quickly to conclusions. They didn't properly investigate the alternatives.'

'You mean yourself?'

Castle thought, I'm not going to make it that easy for them, I'm not going to confess in so many words, however effective this new technique of theirs may be. He said, 'Or Watson.'

'Oh yes, I'd forgotten Watson.'

'Everything in our section pa.s.ses through his hands. And then, of course, there's 69300 in L.M. They can't properly check his accounts. Who knows if he hasn't a bank deposit in Rhodesia or South Africa?'

'True enough,' Daintry said.

'And our secretaries. It's not only our personal secretaries who may be involved. They all belong to a pool. Don't tell me that a girl doesn't go sometimes to the loo without locking up the cable she's been decoding or the report she's been typing?'

'I realise that. I checked the pool myself. There has always been a good deal of carelessness.'

'Carelessness can begin at the top too. Davis's death may have been an example of criminal carelessness.'

'If he wasn't guilty it was murder,' Daintry said. 'He had no chance to defend himself, to employ counsel. They were afraid of the effect a trial might have upon the Americans. Doctor Percival talked to me about boxes...'

'Oh yes,' Castle said. 'I know that spiel. I've heard it often myself. Well, Davis is in a box all right now.'

Castle was aware that Daintry's eyes were on his pocket. Was Daintry pretending to agree with him so as to escape safely back to his car? Daintry said, 'You and I are making the same mistake-jumping to conclusions. Davis may have been guilty. What makes you so certain he wasn't?'

'You have to look for motives,' Castle said. He had hesitated, he had evaded, but he had been strongly tempted to reply, 'Because I am the leak.' He felt sure by this time that the line was cut and he could expect no help, so what was the purpose of delaying? He liked Daintry, he had liked him ever since the day of his daughter's wedding. He had become suddenly human to him over the smashed owl, in the solitude of his smashed marriage. If anyone were to reap credit for his confession he would like it to be Daintry. Why therefore not give up and go quietly, as the police often put it? He wondered if he were prolonging the game only for the sake of company, to avoid the solitude of the house and the solitude of a cell.

'I suppose the motive for Davis would have been money,' Daintry said.

'Davis didn't care much about money. All he needed was enough to bet a little on the horses and treat himself to a good port. You have to examine things a bit closer than that.'

'What do you mean?'

'If our section was the one suspected the leaks could only have concerned Africa.'

'Why?'

'There's plenty of other information that pa.s.ses through my section-that we pa.s.s on-that must be of greater interest to the Russians, but if the leak was there, don't you see, the other sections would be suspect too? So the leak can only be about our particular share of Africa.'

'Yes,' Daintry agreed, 'I see that.'

'That seems to indicate-well, if not exactly an ideology-you don't need to look necessarily for a Communist-but a strong attachment to Africa-or to Africans. I doubt if Davis had ever known an African.' He paused and then added with deliberation and a certain feeling of joy in the dangerous game, 'Except, of course, my wife and my child.' He was putting the dots on an i, but he wasn't going to cross the t's as well. He went on, '69300 has been a long time in L.M. No one knows what friends.h.i.+ps he's made-he has his African agents, many of them Communist.'

'After so many years of concealment he was beginning to enjoy this snake-and-ladder game. Just as I had in Pretoria,' he continued. He smiled, 'Even C, you know, has a certain love of Africa.'

'Oh, there you are joking,' Daintry said.

'Of course I'm joking. I only want to show how little they had against Davis compared with others, myself or 69300-and all those secretaries about whom we know nothing.'

'They were all carefully vetted.'

'Of course they were. We'll have the names of all their lovers on the files, lovers anyway of that particular year, but some girls change their lovers like they change their winter clothes.'

Daintry said, 'You've mentioned a lot of suspects, but you are so sure about Davis.' He added, unhappily, 'You're lucky not to be a security officer. I nearly resigned after Davis's funeral. I wish I had.'

'Why didn't you?'

'What would I have done to pa.s.s the time?'

'You could have collected car numbers. I did that once.'

'Why did you quarrel with your wife?' Daintry asked. 'Forgive me. That's no business of mine.'

'She disapproved of what I'm doing.'

'You mean for the firm?'

'Not exactly.'

Castle could tell the game was nearly over. Daintry had surrept.i.tiously looked at his wrist watch. He wondered whether it was a real watch or a disguised microphone. Perhaps he thought he had come to the end of his tape. Would he ask to go to the lavatory so that he could change it?

'Have another whisky.'

'No, I'd better not. I have to drive home.'

Castle went with him to the hall, and Buller too. Buller was sorry to see a new friend leave.

'Thanks for the drink,' Daintry said.

'Thank you for the chance to talk about a lot of things.'

'Don't come out. It's a beastly night.' But Castle followed him into the cold drizzle. He noticed the tail lights of a car fifty yards down the road opposite the police station.

'Is that your car?'

'No. Mine's a little way up the road. I had to walk down because I couldn't see the numbers in this rain.'

'Goodnight then.'

'Goodnight. I hope things go all right-I mean with your wife.'

Castle stood in the slow cold rain long enough to wave to Daintry as he pa.s.sed. His car didn't stop, he noticed, at the police station but turned right and took the London road. Of course he could always stop at the King's Arms or the Swan to use the telephone, but even in that case Castle doubted whether he would have a very clear report to make. They would probably want to hear his tape before making a decision-Castle felt sure now the watch was a microphone. Of course, the railway station might already he watched and the immigration officers warned at the airports. One fact had surely emerged from Daintry's visit. Young Halliday must have begun to talk or they would never have sent Daintry to see him.

At his door he looked up and down the road. There was no apparent watcher, but the lights of the car opposite the police station still shone through the rain. It didn't look like a police car. The police-he supposed even those of the Special Branch-had to put up with British makes and this-he couldn't be sure but it looked like a Toyota. He remembered the Toyota on the road to Ashridge. He tried to make out the colour, but the rain obscured it. Red and black were indistinguishable through the drizzle which was beginning to turn to sleet. He went indoors and for the first time he dared to hope.

He took the gla.s.ses to the kitchen and washed them carefully. It was as though he were removing the fingerprints of his despair. Then he laid two more gla.s.ses in the sitting-room, and for the first time he encouraged hope to grow. It was a tender plant and it needed a great deal of encouragement, but he told himself that the car was certainly a Toyota. He wouldn't let himself think how many Toyotas there were in the region but waited in patience for the bell to ring. He wondered who it was who would come and stand in Daintry's place on the threshold. It wouldn't be Boris he was sure of that-and neither would it be young Halliday who was only out of custody on sufferance and was probably deeply engaged now with men from the Special Branch.

He went back to the kitchen and gave Buller a plate of biscuits-perhaps it would be a long time before he would be able to eat again. The clock in the kitchen had a noisy tick which seemed to make time go more slowly. If there was really a friend in the Toyota he was taking a long time to appear.

4.

Colonel Daintry pulled into the yard of the King's Arms.

There was only one car in the yard, and he sat for a while at the wheel, wondering whether to telephone now and what to say if he did. He had been shaken with a secret anger during his lunch at the Reform with C and Doctor Percival. There were moments when he had wanted to push his plate of smoked trout aside and say, 'I resign. I don't want to have any more to do with your b.l.o.o.d.y firm.' He was tired to death of secrecy and of errors which had to be covered up and not admitted. A man came across the yard from the outside lavatory whistling a tuneless tune, b.u.t.toning his flies in the security of the dark, and went on into the bar. Daintry thought, They killed my marriage with their secrets. During the war there had been a simple cause-much simpler than the one his father knew. The Kaiser had not been a Hitler, but in the cold war they were now fighting it was possible, as in the Kaiser's war, to argue right and wrong. There was nothing clear enough in the cause to justify murder by mistake. Again he found himself in the bleak house of his childhood, crossing the hall, entering the room where his father and his mother sat hand in hand. 'G.o.d knows best.' his father said, remembering Jutland and Admiral Jellicoe. His mother said, 'My dear, at your age, it's difficult to find another job.' He turned off his lights and moved through the slow heavy rainfall into the bar. He thought: My wife has enough money, my daughter is married, I could live somehow-on my pension.

On this cold wet night there was only one man in the bar-he was drinking a pint of hitter. He said, 'Good evening, sir' as though they were well acquainted.

'Good evening. A double whisky,' Daintry ordered.

'If you can call it that,' the man said as the barman turned away to hold a gla.s.s below a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

'Call what?'

'The evening, I meant, sir. Though this weather's only to be expected, I suppose, in November.'

'Can I use your telephone?' Daintry asked the barman.

The barman pushed the whisky across with an air of rejection. He nodded in the direction of a box. He was clearly a man of few words: he was here to listen to what customers chose to say but not to communicate himself more than was strictly necessary, until-no doubt with pleasure he would p.r.o.nounce the phrase, 'Time, Gentlemen.'

Daintry dialled Doctor Percival's number and while he listened to the engaged tone, he tried to rehea.r.s.e the words he wished to use. 'I've seen Castle... He's alone in the house... He's had a quarrel with his wife... There's nothing more to report...' He would slam down the receiver as he slammed it down now-then he went back to the bar and his whisky and the man who insisted on talking.

'Uh,' the barman said, 'uh' and once, 'That's right.'

The customer turned to Daintry and included him in his conversation. They don't even teach simple arithmetic these days. I said to my nephew-he's nine-what's four times seven, and do you think he could tell me?'

Daintry drank his whisky with his eye on the telephone box, still trying to make up his mind what words to use.

'I can see you agree with me,' the man said to Daintry. 'And you?' he asked the barman. 'Your business would go to pot, wouldn't it, if you couldn't say what four times seven was?'

The barman wiped some spilled beer off the bar and said, 'Uh.'

'Now you, sir, I can guess very easily what profession you follow. Don't ask me how. It's a hunch I have. Comes from studying faces, I suppose, and human nature. That's how I came to be talking about arithmetic while you were on the telephone. That's a subject, I said to Mr. Barker here, about which the gentleman will have strong opinions. Weren't those my very words?'

'Uh,' Mr. Barker said.

'I'll have another pint if you don't mind.'

Mr. Barker filled his gla.s.s.

'My friends sometimes ask me for an exhibition. They even have a little bet on it now and then. He's a schoolmaster, I say, about someone in the tube, or he's a chemist, and then I enquire politely-they don't take offence when I explain to them-and nine times out of ten, I'm right. Mr. Barker has seen me at it in here, haven't you, Mr. Barker?'

'Now you, sir, if you'll excuse me playing my little game just to amuse Mr. Barker here on a cold wet evening-you are in 'Government service. Am I right, sir?'

'Yes,' Daintry said. He finished his whisky and put down his gla.s.s. It was time to try the telephone again.

'So we're getting warm, eh?' The customer fixed him with beady eyes. A sort of confidential position. 'You know a lot more about things than the rest of us.'

'I have to telephone,' Daintry said.

'Just a moment, sir. I just want to show Mr. Barker... He wiped a little beer from his mouth with a handkerchief and thrust his face close to Daintry's. You deal in figures,' he said. 'You are in the Inland Revenue.'

Daintry moved to the telephone box.

'You see,' the customer said, 'touchy fellow. They don't like to be recognised. An inspector probably.'

This time Daintry got the ringing tone and soon he heard Doctor Percival's voice, bland and rea.s.suring as though he had kept his bedside manner long after he had abandoned bedsides. 'Yes? Doctor Percival here. Who is that?'

'Daintry'

'Good evening, my dear fellow. Any news? Where are you?'

'I'm at Berkhamsted. I've seen Castle.'

'Yes. What's your impression?'

Anger took the words he meant to speak and tore them in pieces like a letter one decides not to send. 'My impression is that you've murdered the wrong man.'

'Not murdered,' Doctor Percival said gently, 'an error in the prescription. The stuff hadn't been tried before on an human being. But what makes you think that Castle...?'

'Because he's certain that Davis was innocent.'

'He said that-in so many words?'

'Yes.'

'What's he up to?'

'He's waiting.'

'Waiting for what?'

'Something to happen. His wife's left him with the child. He says they've quarrelled.'

'We've already circulated a warning,' Doctor Percival said, 'to the airports-and the sea ports too of course. If he makes a run for it, we'll have prima facie evidence-but we'll still need the hard stuff.'

'You didn't wait for the hard stuff with Davis.'

'C insists on it this time. What are you doing now?'