‘Better get it over with, I suppose,’ said the youthful Mr Bryant with a sigh.
Mr Grimond’s office was entirely without colour. Situated on the second floor of a red-brick building in Queen Anne’s Gate, it overlooked St James’s Park, or would have done if its occupant hadn’t chosen to shut out the view with two dingy blinds. A square of grey carpet, of precisely the right size for his civil service rank, was laid on the floor, and on it was placed a dark wooden desk with a scratched leather top, strewn with buff files. Mr Grimond matched the sobriety of his room with his salt and pepper hair, faded tweed suit and brown tie. He sat on a wooden revolving chair that squeaked dismally every time he moved.
‘You wanted to see me?’ Mr Bryant said.
Grimond looked up from his file. ‘Got in at last, have you? Yes. A man’s gone missing. One George Helsinger. Dr Helsinger. Alice has asked for his file. Read it, and then catch the next train to Cambridge.’
‘Cambridge?’
‘Cambridge. Cold market town on the edge of the fens.’
‘I know Cambridge. I was at university there. But why do I have to go to Cambridge?’
‘Because the man who’s gone missing is one of their boffins.’
‘Oh, dear. Is he important?’
‘Would I be going to this much trouble if he weren’t? He’s one of our top men. An atom scientist. Worked on the A bomb at Los Alamos, nothing he doesn’t know. And I bet my last ten-bob note he’s halfway to Moscow by now.’
‘In which case, why am I going to Cambridge?’
‘To make enquiries. Talk to his colleagues, his landlady, find out what he’s been working on, has he been moody, what are his political views, as if I didn’t know. He’ll be a Red, like all the rest of them.’
‘When was he reported missing?’
‘Yesterday, after I noticed that he was down as having been granted a sabbatical. Six months’ leave of absence from the laboratory, I ask you, nobody gives us six months off on full pay. I checked to find out where he was spending his time, and it turned out nobody knew. No attachments to any foreign universities—that’s what they often do, apparently, take themselves on a jaunt to America or France or somewhere they can be idle at the taxpayer’s expense. “Time off to think” is all the idiots he works with could come up with.’
‘Do we know if he has actually gone abroad?’
‘Told his landlady he was going to the Continent, and didn’t know when he’d be back. He’s gone all right.’
‘Have we traced him?’
‘Doing it now, checking on the airports and ferries. Trail will have gone cold; he left the day before yesterday. He’s done a flit, defected, no question about it. There’ll be hell to pay on this one, mark my words.’
Marjorie’s heart lifted as the ancient taxi, reeking of terrible old French cigarettes, rumbled its way across the cobbled streets. Paris was alive; Paris had been reborn; all the harrowing times of Occupation were now only a memory, if a vivid one for someone of Marjorie’s age, who remembered the war and the distress of the fall of France all too well. The houses were still shabby, with peeling paint and crumbling stucco, the roads uneven and pot-holed, the pavements cracked and disorganised; but yet, underneath it all, the vitality of the city was there, unquenched and unmistakable.
And the sun was shining. And she was hungry, very hungry, her hunger sharpened by the shops and stalls they passed, fruit piled high, a little boy walking along with a baguette almost as long as he was tall tucked under his arm, a corner stall with oysters laid out in icy baskets.
The taxi ground to a halt with a screech of uncertain brakes, and the driver heaved himself out and slouched round to let her out and hand her her suitcase.
She recklessly handed over some of her precious francs, including a tip more generous than his surliness warranted, but she was in Paris, and it was spring, and she was, for this moment at least, happy, and the tip earned her an answering smile and even a civil ‘Au revoir, Madame’.
Madame! Yes, she’d been Madame for a long time now. How many years it was since she’d arrived in Paris, an eager seventeen-year-old, definitely a mademoiselle, plunging into a delightful world of cafés and jazz and endless, relentless pursuit of love and pleasure and fun. Paris had been her liberation, but it wasn’t a liberation that had survived her inevitable return to England, to a necessary job, mindnumbingly boring, so boring that she’d found herself using every scrap of time when the supervisor’s eyes weren’t on her to scribble stories that took her out of the dull office and into a headier, richer world of the imagination. Then her second liberation, of finding she could make enough money by her pen, just enough to get by, so that she could give up her job, which she’d left with joy in her heart, swearing to herself that never, no, never again would she work in an office.
A thin woman swathed in grey garments, and with dark, suspicious little eyes, pushed a ledger towards her.
‘Papers,’ she said. ‘Passport. How long are you staying?’
It was all so familiar, the Hotel Belfort, with its tiny entrance hall, the vase of dried flowers, dustier and more shrivelled than ever, sitting on the scruffy counter, the brass bell that gave off only a dull thud when struck, instead of the expected clang. Even Madame Roche didn’t seem to have changed a bit.
‘You don’t remember me, Madame Roche? I used to stay here, before the war.’
Madame’s eyes flew heavenwards. ‘Ah, before the war, that is a long time ago. Who can remember before the war? Everything was different before the war.’
Yes, and I bet you had German lodgers, and fleeced them, just as you’ve always fleeced your clients, Marjorie thought, as she took the large key that Madame held out for her. Why, she wondered, knowing what Madame Roche was like, had she always stayed here when she was in Paris? Familiarity, and she liked the area: the boulangerie on the corner, the little shop that sold tin goods, the kiosk where she bought her daily paper, the old woman selling flowers from a tiny stall. Buckets and buckets of flowers; no doubt the woman and her flowers were long gone.
It was a mistake. This was a mistake. She should have gone straight through; it was madness to break her journey in Paris. If she’d left early in the morning, caught the first boat, gone straight to the lawyer’s office, collected the money, then she could have been on the train to Italy even now, not stirring up old memories that were better forgotten.
Her happy mood was draining away. No, she wasn’t going to look back, she wasn’t going to let any regrets take her back into the glums. Come on, Marjorie, she told herself. Let’s see how much money you’ve got, and then go out and find a restaurant.
She stared at the notes in the envelope, each bundle held in a paperclip, with a white sheet of paper beneath it. French francs, one said, and a much bigger bundle of Italian lire.
Had they made a mistake? Why on earth would they give her that much money?
‘Under the terms of the late Mrs Malaspina’s will, we are directed to defray all necessary expenses for your journey to Italy,’ the grave lawyer in London had told her. ‘We shall give you here in England the maximum you are allowed by government regulations to take out of the country. Obviously, once you are on the other side of the channel, out of the sterling area, such restrictions do not apply, and our colleagues in Paris will ensure that you have enough money to continue on your way to Italy.’
‘But who is Beatrice Malaspina? There must be a mistake. I’ve never heard of her.’
There had been no mistake, the lawyer assured her. Her name, her full name, her address, even