And from his pocket, in all its undestroyed glory, Luxmore’s four-page telegram, which Osnard laid out page by page for easy reading. Then he sat frowning at it with his mouth hanging open, selecting from it, memorising and rejecting simultaneously, the way a Method actor might read his lines: I’ll say this but say it differently, I won’t say that at all, I’ll do this but my way not his. He heard the rumble of a car pulling into garage number eight. Rising, he tucked the four pages of the telegram back in his pocket and placed himself at the centre of the room. He heard the clunk of a tinny door and thought ‘four-track’. He heard footsteps approaching and thought ‘walks like a bloody waiter’ while he tried to listen beyond them for sounds that might not be so friendly. Has Harry sold and told? Has he brought a bunch of heavies to arrest me? Of course he bloody hasn’t, but the trainers said it was wise to wonder so I’m wondering. A knock at the door: three shorts, one long. Osnard slipped the lock and drew the door back, not all the way. Pendel, standing on the doorstep, clutching a fancy holdall.
‘My goodness me, whatever are they up to, Andy? Reminds me of the Three Tolinos at Bertram Mills Circus when my Uncle Benny used to take me.’
‘Christ’s sake!’ Osnard hissed as he bundled him into the room. ‘You’ve got P&B plastered all over your bloody bag.’
There was no chair so they sat on the bed. Pendel was wearing a panabrisa. A week ago he had confided to Osnard that panabrisas would be the death of him: cool, smart and comfortable, Andy, and cost fifty dollars, I don’t know why I bother. Osnard went into the routine. This was no chance encounter between tailor and customer. This was a full-scale, twenty-five-thousand-mile service conducted according to the classic spy-school handbook.
‘Got any problems with being here?’
‘Thank you, Andy, everything is hunkydory. How about you?’
‘Got any materials that are better in my hands than yours?’
Groping in a pocket of his panabrisa, Pendel produced the ornamented cigarette lighter, delved again for a coin, unscrewed the base and shook out a black cylinder which he passed across the bed.
‘There’s only the twelve on there, Andy, I’m afraid, but I thought you’d better have them all the same. In my day we’d have waited till the film was finished before we took it to the chemist.’
‘Nobody follow you, recognise you? Motorbike? Car? Nobody you didn’t like the look of?’
Pendel shook his head.
‘What do you do if we’re disturbed?’
‘I leave the explanations to you, Andy. I take my departure at my earliest convenience and I advise my sub-sources to get their heads down or take a foreign holiday and you wait for me to contact you when normal service is resumed.’
‘How?’
‘The emergency procedure. Callbox to callbox at the agreed times.’
Osnard obliged Pendel to recite the agreed times.
‘How about if that doesn’t work?’
‘Well, there’s always the shop, isn’t there, Andy? We are somewhat overdue for a fitting on our tweed jacket, which provides us with a cast-iron excuse. It’s a corker,’ he added. ‘I can always tell a nice jacket when I’ve cut one.’
‘How many letters have you sent me since we last met?’
‘Just the three, Andy. That was all I could manage in the time. Business is coming in you wouldn’t believe. The new clubroom has really tipped the balance in my opinion.’
‘What were they?’
‘Two invoices and one invitation to a preview of new attractions in the boutique. They came out all right, did they? Because I worry sometimes.’
‘You’re not pressing hard enough. Writing gets lost in the print. You using ballpoint or pencil?’
‘Pencil, Andy, like you told me.’
Osnard fished in the sump of his briefcase and came up with a plain wood pencil. ‘Have a go with this next time. Double H. Harder.’
On the screen the two women had abandoned their man and were consoling themselves with one another.
Stores. Osnard handed Pendel the can of fly spray containing spare cassettes of film. Pendel shook it, pressed the top and grinned when it worked. Pendel expressed anxiety about the shelf-life of his carbons, whether they’d lost their fizz or anything, Andy? Osnard handed him a new set anyway and told him to sling whatever he had left of the old lot.