Haldane coughed a deep, hopeless cough, like an echo in an old vault.
What sort of officer, someone asked, was he—German or Russian?
“German. That is most relevant. There were no Russians in evidence at all.”
Haldane interrupted sharply. “The refugee saw none. That’s all we know. Let us be accurate.” He coughed again. It was irritating.
“As you wish. He went home and had lunch. He was disgruntled at being ordered around in his own station by a lot of young fellows playing soldiers. He had a couple of glasses of schnapps and sat there brooding about the dumping shed. Adrian, if your cough is troubling you …” Haldane shook his head. “He remembered that on the northern side it abutted an old storage hut, and that there was a shutter-type ventilator let into the party wall. He formed the notion of looking through the ventilator to see what was in the shed. As a way of getting his own back on the soldiers.”
Woodford laughed.
“Then he decided to go one further and photograph whatever was there.”
“He must have been mad,” Haldane commented. “I find this part impossible to accept.”
“Mad or not, that’s what he decided to do. He was cross because they wouldn’t trust him. He felt he had a right to know what was in the shed.” Leclerc missed a beat, then took refuge in technique. “He had an Exa-two camera, single lens reflex, East German manufacture. It’s a cheap housing but takes all the Exakta range lenses; far fewer speeds than the Exakta, of course.” He looked inquiringly at the technicians, Dennison and McCulloch. “Am I right, gentlemen?” he asked. “You must correct me.” They smiled sheepishly because there was nothing to correct. “He had a good wide-angle lens. The difficulty was the light. His next shift didn’t begin till four and by that time dusk would be falling and there would be even less light inside the shed. He had one fast Agfa film which he’d been keeping for a special occasion; it had a DIN speed of twenty-six. He decided to use that.” He paused, more for effect than for questions.
“Why didn’t he wait till next morning?” Haldane asked.
“In the report,” Leclerc continued blandly, “You’ll find a very full account by Gorton of how the man got into the hut, stood on an oil drum and took his photographs through the ventilator. I’m not going to repeat all that now. He used the maximum aperture of two-point-eight, speeds ranging from a quarter of a second to two seconds. A fortunate piece of German thoroughness.” No one laughed. “The speeds were guesswork, of course. He was bracketing an estimated exposure time of one second. Only the last three frames show anything. Here they are.”
Leclerc unlocked the steel drawer of his desk and extracted a set of high-gloss photographs twelve inches by nine. He was smiling a little, like a man looking at his own reflection. They gathered round, all but Haldane and Avery, who had seen them before.
Something was there.
You could see it if you looked quickly; something hidden in the disintegrating shadows; but keep looking and the dark closed in and the shape was gone. Yet something was there— the muffled form of a gun barrel, but pointed and too long for its carriage, the suspicion of a transporter, a vague glint of what might have been a platform.
“They would put protective covers over them, of course,” Leclerc commented, studying their faces hopefully, waiting for their optimism.
Avery looked at his watch. It was twenty ‘past eleven. “I shall have to go soon, Director,” he said. He still hadn’t rang Sarah. “I have to see the accountant about my air ticket.”
“Stay another ten minutes,” Leclerc pleaded, and Haldane asked, “Where’s he going?”
Leclerc replied, throw-away, “To take care of Taylor. He has a date at the Circus first.”
“What do you mean, take care of him? Taylor’s dead.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“You know very well that Taylor was traveling under an alias. Somebody has to collect his effects; recover the film. Avery is going out as next of kin. The Ministry has already given its approval; I wasn’t aware that I needed yours.”