A bell rang suddenly; a long, assertive peal up and down the corridors. They heard the slamming of doors and the sound of running feet. A girl was calling: ‘Where’s Valerie, where’s Valerie?’
‘Fire practice,’ Meadows said. ‘We’re running to two or three a week at present. Don’t worry. Registry’s exempt.’
Turner sat down. He looked even paler than before. He ran a big hand through his tufted, fair hair.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
‘Ever since March now he’s been working on a big project: all the seven-o-sevens. That’s Statutes. There’s about two hundred of them or moe, and mainly to do with the handover when the Occupation ended. Terms of withdrawal, residual rights, rights of evocation, phases of autonomy and God knows what. All forty-nine to fifty-five stuff, not relevant here at all. He might have started in half a dozen places on the Destruction, but the moment he saw the seven-o-sevens, they were the ones for him. “Here,” he said. “That’s just right for me, Arthur, I can cut my milk teeth on them. I know what they’re talking about; it’s familiar ground.” I shouldn’t think anyone had looked at it for fifteen years. But tricky, even if it was obsolete. Full of technical talk. Surprising what Leo knew, mind. All the terms, German and English, all the legal phrases.’ Meadows shook his head in admiration. ‘I saw a minute of his go the Legal Attaché, a résumé of file; I couldn’t have put it together I’m sure, and I doubt whether there’s anyone in Chancery could either. All about the Prussian Criminal Code and regional sovereignty of justice. And half of it in German, too.’
‘He knew moe than he was prepared to let on: is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, it’s not,’ said Meadowes. ‘And don’t you go putting words into my mouth. He was being used, that’s what I mean; he had a lot of knowledge in him that he hadn’t done anything with for a long time. All of a sudden, he could put it to work.’
Meadowes resumed: ‘With the seven-o-sevens there wasn’t any real question of destruction: more of sending it back to London and getting it stored out the way, but it all had to be read and submitted the same as everything else, and he’d been getting very deep in it these last few weeks. I told you he was quiet up here; well, he was. And once he got tucked into the Statutes he got quieter and quieter. He was on a track.’
‘When did this happen?’
At the back of Turner’s notebook there was a diary; he had it open before him.
‘Three weeks ago. He went further and further in. Still jolly, mind; still bouncing up and down to get the girls a chair or help them with a parcel. But something had got hold of him, and it meant a lot to him. Still quizzy; no one will ever cure him of that; he had to know exactly what each of us was up to. But subdued. And he got worse. More and more thoughtful; more and more serious. Then on Monday, last Monday, he changed.’
‘A week ago today,’ said Turner. ‘The fifth.’
‘Seven days. Is that all? My God.’ There was a sudden smell of hot wax from next door, and the muffled thud of a large seal being pressed on to a packet.
‘That’ll be the two o’clock bag they’re getting ready,’ he muttered inconsequentially, and glanced at his silver pocket watch. ‘It’s due down there at twelve thirty.’
‘I’ll come back after lunch if you like.’
‘I’d rather be done with you before,’ Meadowes said. ‘If you don’t mind.’ He put the watch away. ‘Where is he? Do you know? What’s happened to him? He’s gone to Russia, is that?’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘He might have gone anywhere, you couldn’t tell. He wasn’t like us. He tried to be, but he wasn’t. More like you, I suppose, in some ways. Perverse. Always busy but always doing things back to front. Nothing was simple, I reckon that was his trouble. Too much childhood. Or none. It comes to the same thing really. I like people to grow slowly.’