‘Let’s stop beating around the bush, shall we? The department has given me jobs from time to time. They do that with pensioned-off operatives because it keeps them signing the Act, and also because their pensions make them the most needy – and so the cheapest – people around.’
‘Come back to London, Steve.’
‘Can’t you understand plain bloody King’s English, Charlie? Either the girl is not dead, and the department have put her on ice in order to finger me …’
‘Or?’
‘Or she’s dead and the department arranged it.’
‘No.’
‘How can you say no. Do they let you read the Daily Yellows?’
‘It’s no good, Steve,’ I said. ‘The department would never do it this way and both of us know it.’
‘The confidence you show in those bastards …’ said Champion. ‘We know only a fraction of what goes on up there. They’ve told you that Melodie was a departmental employee – have you ever heard of her or seen any documents?’
‘The documents of an operative in the field? Of course I haven’t.’
‘Exactly. Well, suppose I tell you that she was never an employee and the department have wanted her killed for the last three months. Suppose I told you that they ordered me to kill her, and that I refused. And that that was when the row blew up.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘The department made that contact for me. They said she was from the Palestinian terrorists. They told me that she was a nutty American student, the London contact for five hundred stolen Armalites and two tons of gelignite.’ Champion was excited now and smiling nervously, as I remembered him from the old days.
He sipped his drink. ‘They sent an American chap to see me. Is his name Schindler? Drinks that Underberg stuff, I remember. I wouldn’t believe he was from the department at first. Then they sent a Mutual down to confirm him as OK. Is it Schroder?’
‘Something like that,’ I said.
‘He mentioned the killing end. I didn’t take him seriously at first. I mean, they must still have special people for that game, surely. But he was in earnest. Ten thousand pounds, he said. He had it all set up, too. He’d organized a flat in Barons Court stacked up with beer and whisky and cans of beans and soup. I’m telling you, it was equipped like a fall-out shelter. And he showed me this hypodermic syringe, killing wire and rubber gloves. Talk about horror movies, I needed a couple of big whiskies when I got out of there.’ He drank some coffee. ‘And then I realized how I’d put my prints on everything he’d shown me.’ He sighed. ‘No fool like an old fool.’
‘Did they pay the bill for the tweed jacket we found there?’
‘There was no reason to be suspicious,’ said Champion. ‘They told me to order the suits, and they paid for them. It was only when they sent a funny little man round to my place to take the labels and manufacturers’ marks out of them that I began to worry. I mean … can you think of anything more damning than picking up some johnny and then finding he’s got no labels in his suits?’
‘There was money in the shoulder-pads,’ I told him. ‘And documents, too.’
‘Well, there you are. It’s the kind of thing a desk-man would dream up if he’d never been at the sharp end. Wouldn’t you say that, Charlie?’
I looked at Champion but I didn’t answer. I wanted to believe him innocent, but if I discounted his charm, and the nostalgia, I saw only an ingenious man improvising desperately in the hope of getting away with murder.
‘How long ago are we talking about?’ I said.
‘Just a couple of weeks before I ran into you … or rather you sought me out. That’s why I wasn’t suspicious that you were official. I mean, they could have found out whatever they needed to know through their normal contacts … but that girl, she wasn’t one of them, Charlie, believe me.’
‘Did you tell her?’
‘Like fun! This girl was trying to buy armaments – and not for the first time. She could take care of herself, believe me. She carried, too – she carried a big .38 in that crocodile handbag.’ He finished his coffee and tried to pour more, but the pot was empty. ‘Anyway, I’ve never killed anyone in cold blood and I wasn’t about to start, not for the department and not for money, either. But I reasoned that someone would do it. It might have been someone I liked a lot better than her. It might have been you.’
‘That was really considerate of you Steve,’ I said.
He turned his head to me. The swelling seemed to have grown worse in the last half hour. Perhaps that was because of Champion’s constant touches. The blue and red flesh had almost pushed his eye closed. ‘You don’t go through our kind of war, and come out the other end saying you’d never kill anyone, no matter what kind of pressure is applied.’
I looked at him for a long time. ‘The days of the entrepreneur are over, Steve,’ I told him. ‘Now it’s the organization man who gets the Christmas bonus and the mileage allowance. People like you are called “heroes”, and don’t mistake it for a compliment. It just means has-beens, who’d rather have a hunch than a computer output. You are yesterday’s spy, Steve.’
‘And you’d sooner believe those organization men than believe me?’
‘No good waving your arms, Steve,’ I said. ‘You’re standing on the rails and the express just blew its whistle.’
He stared at me. ‘Oooh, they’ve changed you, Charlie! Those little men who’ve promised you help with your mortgage, and full pension rights at sixty. Who would have thought they could have done that to the kid who fought the war with a copy of Wage Labour and Capital in his back pocket. To say nothing of that boring lecture you gave everyone about Mozart’s revolutionary symbolism in “The Marriage of Figaro”.’ He smiled, but I didn’t.
‘You’ve had your say, Steve. Don’t take the jury out into the back alley.’
‘I hope you listened carefully then,’ he said. He got to his feet and tossed some ten-franc notes on to the coffee tray. ‘Because if you are only half as naïve as you pretend to be … and if you have put your dabs all over some carefully chosen incriminating evidence …’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Then it could be that London are setting us both up for that big debriefing in the sky.’
‘You’ve picked up my matches,’ I said.
7
‘You’d sooner live in a dump than live in a nice home,’ said Schlegel accusingly.
‘No,’ I said, but without much conviction. I didn’t want to argue with him.
He opened the shutters so that he could see the charcuterie across the alley. The tiny shop-window was crammed with everything from shredded carrot to pig feet. Schlegel shuddered. ‘Yes, you would,’ he insisted. ‘Remember that fleapit you used to have in Soho. Look at that time we booked you into the St Regis, and you went into a cold-water walk-up in the Village. You like dumps!’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘If this place had some kind of charm, I’d understand. But it’s just a flophouse.’ For a long time he was silent. I walked across to the window and discovered that he was staring into the first-floor window across the alley. A fat woman in a frayed dressing-gown was using a sewing machine. She looked up at Schlegel, and when he did not look away she closed her shutters. Schlegel turned and looked round the room. I’d put asters, souci and cornflowers into a chipped tumbler from the washbasin.