“If those people know,” the Under Secretary said with contempt, “it’ll be round every damned club by tomorrow.”
“There is that danger,” Leclerc conceded. “More particularly, I wonder whether the Circus has the military skills. A rocket site is a complicated affair: launch pads, blast shields, cable troughs; all these things require proper processing and evaluation. Control and I could combine forces, I suppose—”
“That’s out of the question. You people make poor bedfellows. Even if you succeeded in cooperating, it would be against policy; no monolith.”
“Ah yes. Of course.”
“Assume you do it yourself, then; assume you find a man. What would that involve?”
“A supplementary estimate. Immediate resources. Extra staff. A training establishment. Ministerial protection; special passes and authority.” The knife again. “And some help from Control … we could obtain that under a pretext.”
A foghorn echoed mournfully across the water.
“If it’s the only way . . .”
“Perhaps you’d put it to the Minister,” Leclerc suggested.
Silence. Leclerc continued, “In practical terms we need the best part of thirty thousand pounds.”
“Accountable?”
“Partially. I understood you wanted to be spared details.”
“Except where the Treasury’s concerned. I suggest that you make a memo about costs.”
“Very well. Just an outline.”
The silence returned.
“That is hardly a large sum when set against the risk,” the Under Secretary said, consoling himself.
“The potential risk. We want to clarify. I don’t pretend to be convinced. Merely suspicious, heavily suspicious.” He couldn’t resist adding, “The Circus would ask twice as much. They’re very free with money.”
“Thirty thousand pounds, then, and our protection?”
“And a man. But I must find him for myself.” A small laugh. The Under Secretary said abruptly, “There are certain details the Minister will not want to know. You realize that?”
“Of course. I imagine you will do most of the talking.”
“I imagine the Minister will. You’ve succeeded in worrying him a good deal.”
This time Leclerc remarked with impish piety, “We should never do that to our master; our common master.”
The Under Secretary did not seem to feel they had one. They stood up.
“Incidentally,” Leclerc said, “Mrs. Taylor’s pension. I’m making an application to the Treasury. They feel the Minister should sign it.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“It’s a question of whether he was killed in action.”
The Under Secretary froze. “That is most presumptuous. You’re asking for Ministerial confirmation that Taylor was murdered.”
“I’m asking for a widow’s pension,” Leclerc protested gravely. “He was one of my best men.”
“Of course. They always are.”
The Minister did not look up as they came in.
But the Police Inspector rose from his chair, a short, plump man with a shaven neck. He wore plain clothes. Avery supposed him to be a detective. He shook their hands with an air of professional bereavement, sat them in modern chairs with teak arms and offered cigars out of a tin. They declined, so he lit one himself and used it thereafter both as a prolongation of his short fingers when making gestures of emphasis, and as a drawing instrument to describe in the smoke-filled air objects of which he was speaking. He deferred frequently to Avery’s grief by thrusting his chin downward into his collar and casting from the shadow of his lowered eyebrows confiding looks of sympathy. First he related the circumstances of the accident, praised in tiresome detail the efforts of the police to track down the car, referred frequently to the personal concern of the President of Police, whose anglophilia was a byword, and stated his own conviction that the guilty man would be found out and punished with the full severity of Finnish law. He dwelt for some time on his own admiration of the British, his affection for the Queen and Sir Winston Churchill, the charms of Finnish neutrality, and finally he came to the body.
The postmortem, he was proud to say, was complete, and Mr. Public Prosecutor (his own words) had declared that the circumstances of Mr. Malherbe’s death gave no grounds for suspicion despite the presence of a considerable amount of alcohol in the blood. The barman at the airport accounted for five glasses of Steinhager. He turned to Sutherland.