Bradfield came slowly through the doorway. His face was taut but without expression.
‘I gather he’s not here.’
No one spoke.
‘You still say you saw him?’
‘No mistake, old boy. Sorry.’
‘Well, I suppose we must believe you. I suggest we go back to the Embassy.’ He glanced at Turner. ‘Unless you prefer to stay. If you have some further theory to test.’ He looked round the buffet. Every face was turned towards them. Behind the bar, a chrome machine was steaming unattended. Not a hand moved. ‘You seem to have made your mark here anyway.’ As they walked slowly back to the car, Bradfield said, ‘You can come into the Embassy to collect your possessions but you must be out by lunchtime. If you have any papers, leave them with Cork and we’ll send them on by bag. There’s a flight at seven. Take it. If you can’t get a seat, take the train. But go.’
They waited while Bradfield spoke to the policemen and showed them his red card. His German sounded very English in tone but the grammar was faultless. The policeman nodded, saluted and they took their leave. Slowly they returned to the Embassy through the sullen faces of the aimless crowd.
‘Extraordinary place for Leo to spend the night,’ Crabbe muttered, but Turner was fingering the gunmetal key in the OHMS envelope in his pocket, and still wondering, for all his sense of failure, whose door it had unlocked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Strain of Being a Pig
He sat at the cypher room desk, still in his raincoat, packing together the useless trophies of his investigation: the army holster, the folded print, the engraved paper knife from Margaret Aickman; the blue-bound diary for counsellors and above, the little notebook for diplomatic discounts, and the scratched tin of five wooden buttons cut to size; and now the sixth button and the three stubs of cigar.
‘Never mind,’ said Cork kindly. ‘He’ll turn up.’
‘Oh sure. Like the investments and the Caribbean dream. Leo’s everybody’s darling. Everybody’s lost son, Leo is. We all love Leo, although he cut our throats.’
‘Mind you, he couldn’t half tell the tale.’ He was sitting on the truckle bed in his shirt-sleeves, pulling on his outdoor shoes. He wore metal springs above the elbows and his shirt was like an advertisement on the Underground. There was no sound from the corridor. ‘That’s what got you about him. Quiet, but a sod.’
A machine stammered and Cork frowned at it reprovingly. ‘Blarney,’ he continued. ‘That’s what he had. The magic. He could tell you any bloody tale and you believed it.’
He had put them into a paper waste-bag. The label on the outside said ‘SECRET. Only to be disposed of in the presence of two authorised witnesses.’
‘I want this sealed and sent to Lumley,’ he said, and Cork wrote out a receipt and signed it.
‘I remember the first time I met him,’ Cork said, in the cheerful voice which Turner associated with funeral breakfasts. ‘I was green. I was really green. I’d only been married six months. If I hadn’t twigged him I’d have-‘
‘You’d have been taking his tips on investment. You’d have been lending him the code books for bedside reading.’ He stapled the mouth of the bag, folding it against itself.
‘Not the code books. Janet. He’d have been reading her in bed.’ Cork smiled happily. ‘Bloody neck! You wouldn’t credit it. Come on then. Lunch.’
For the last time Turner savagely clamped together the two arms of the stapler. ‘Is de Lisle in?’
‘Doubt it. London’s sent a brief the size of your arm. All hands on deck. The dips are out in force.’ He laughed. ‘They ought to have a go with the old black flags. Lobby the deputies. Strenuous representations at all levels. Leave no stone unturned. And they’re going for another loan. I don’t know where the Krauts get the stuff from sometimes. Know what Leo said to me once? “I tell you what, Bill, we’ll score a big diplomatic victory. We’ll go down to the Bundestag and offer them a million quid. Just you and me. I reckon they’d fall down in a faint.” He was right, you know.’