creditors’ meeting.
There was something else. She had blushed when Pritchard asked if she
would be using the car; then, hastily, she had said Pritchard drives me.
Hamilton said: “Where do you take Mrs. Hamilton, Pritchard?”
“She drives herself, sir. I make myself useful around the house–there’s
always plenty–” “Yes, all right,” Hamilton . “This isn’t a
time-and-motion study. I was only curious.”
His ulcer stabbed him. Tea, he thought: I should drink milk in the
morning.
HERBERT CHIESEMAN switched on the light, silenced the alarm clock,
turned up the volume of the radio which had been playing all night, and
pressed the rewind button of the reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Then he got out of bed.
He put the kettle on, and stared out of the studio apartment window
while he waited for the seven-hour tape to return to the start. The
morning was clear and bright. The sun would be strong later, but now it
was chilly. He put on trousers and a sweater over the underwear he had
worn in bed, and stepped into carpet slippers.
His home was a single large room in a North London Victorian house which
was past its best.
The furniture, the Ascot heater, and the old gas cooker belonged to the
landlord. The radio was Herbert’s. His rent included the use of a
communal bathroom and most important–exclusive use of the attic.
The radio dominated the room. It was a powerful VHF receiver, made from
parts he had carefully selected in half a dozen shops along Tottenham
Court Road. The aerial was in the roof loft. The tape deck was also
homemade.
He poured tea into a cup, added condensed milk from a tin, and sat at
his work table. Apart from the electronic equipment, the table bore only
a telephone, a ruled exercise book, and a ballpoint pen. He opened the
book at a clean page and wrote the date at the top in a large, cursive
script.
Then he reduced the volume of the radio and began to play, the night’s
tape at high speed. Each time a high-pitched squeal indicated that there
was speech on the recording, he slowed the reel with his finger until he
could distinguish the words. car proceed to Holloway Road, the bottom
end, to assist PC Ludlow Road, West Five, a Mrs. Shaftesbury–sounds
like a domestic, Twenty-One. Inspector says if that Chinese is still
open he’ll have chicken-fried rice with … Holloway Road get a move on,
that Pc’s in trouble..
Herbert stopped the tape and made a note. reported bw of a house–that’s
near Wimbledon Common, Jack …” Eighteen, do you read ..
any cars that are free to assist Fire Brigade at twenty-two Feather
Street
Herbert made another note.
Eighteen, do you read .. I don’t know, give her an aspirin …” assault
with a knife, not serious. where the hell have you been, Eighteen
Herbert’s attention strayed to the photograph on the mantelpiece above
the boarded-in fireplace.
The picture was flattering: Herbert had known this, twenty years ago,
when she had given it to him; but now he had forgotten. Oddly, he did
not think of her as she really had been, anymore.
When he remembered her he visualized a woman with flawless skin and
hand-tinted cheeks, posing before a faded panorama in a photographer’s
studio. ii … theft of one color television and damage to a plexiglass
window …”
He had been the first among his circle of friends to “lose the wife,” as
they would put it. Two or three of them had suffered the tragedy since:
one had become a cheerful drunkard, another had married a widow.
Herbert had buried his head in his hobby, radio. He began listening to
police broadcasts during the day when he did not feel well enough to go
to work, which was quite often. Grey Avenue, Golders Green, reported
assault.1
One day, after hearing the police talk about a bank raid, he had
telephoned the Evening Post. A reporter had thanked him for the
information and taken his name and address. The raid had been a big one
quarter of a million pounds and the story was on the front page of the