The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 15

"Anything else?"

"I do hear that he's more than a bit of a ladies' man. In the first month alone he's supposed to have s.h.a.gged half the women on the fourth floor. And you know that blonde in the typing pool we all nicknamed the Jayne Mansfield of Muswell Hill?"

"Not her too? I thought she didn't look at anything below a full colonel?"

"Well, if the grapevine has it aright she dropped her knickers to half-mast for this half-colonel."

What a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

George hated his namesake.

George envied his namesake.

It was someone's birthday. Some bloke on the floor below, whom he didn't know particularly well but Ted did. A whole crowd of them, serving soldiers in civvies, literally and metaphorically letting their hair down, followed up cake and coffee in the office with a mob-handed invasion of a nightclub in Greek Street, Soho. Soho a ten-minute walk from the War Office, the nearest thing London had to a red-light district, occupying a maze of narrow little streets east of the elegant Regent Street, south of the increasingly vulgar Oxford Street, north of the bright lights of Shaftesbury Avenue and west of the bookshops of the Charing Cross Road. It was home to the Marquee music club, the Flamingo, also a music club, the private boozing club known as the Colony Room, the scurrilous magazine Private Eye, the Gay Hussar restaurant, the Coach and Horses pub (and too many other pubs ever to mention), a host of odd little shops where a nod and a wink might get you into the back room for purchase of a faintly p.o.r.nographic film, a plethora of strip clubs and the occasional and more-than-occasional prost.i.tute.

He'd be late home. So what? They'd all be late home.

They moved rapidly on to Frith Street and street by street and club by club worked their way across towards Wardour Street. The intention, George was sure, was to end up in a strip joint. He hoped to slip away before they reached The Silver t.i.t or The Golden a.r.s.e and the embarra.s.sing farce of watching a woman wearing only a G-string and pasties jiggle all that would jiggle in front of a bunch of p.i.s.sed and paunchy middle-aged men who confused t.i.tillation with satisfaction.

He'd been aware of Lt Col. Horsfield's presence from the first the upper-cla.s.s bray of a bar-room bore could cut through any amount of noise. He knew H. G.'s type. Minor public school, too idle for university, but snapped up by Sandhurst because he cut a decent figure on the parade ground. Indeed, he rather thought the only reason the Army had picked him for Eaton Hall was that he too looked the officer type at a handsome five foot eleven inches.

As they reached Dean Street George stepped off the pavement meaning to head south and catch a bus to Waterloo, but Ted had him by one arm.

"Not so fast, old son. The night is yet young."

"If it's all the same to you, Ted, I'd just as soon go home. I can't abide strippers, and H. G. is really beginning to get on my t.i.ts if not on theirs."

"Nonsense, you're one of us. And we won't be going to a t.i.tty bar for at least an hour. Come and have a drink with your mates and ignore H. G. He'll be off as soon as the first prozzie flashes a bit of cleavage at him."

"He doesn't?"

"He does. Sooner or later everybody does. Haven't you?"

"Well ... yes ... out in Benghazi ... before I was married ... but not ..."

"It's OK, old son. Not compulsory. I'll just be having a couple of jars myself then I'll be home to Mill Hill and the missis."

It was a miserable half-hour. He retreated to a booth on his own, nursing a pink gin he didn't much want. He'd no idea how long she'd been sitting there. He just looked up from pink reflections and there she was. Pet.i.te, dark, twenty-ish and looking uncannily like the dangerous woman of his dreams; the almost pencil-thin eyebrows, the swept-back chestnut hair, the almond eyes, the pout of slightly prominent front teeth and the cheekbones from heaven or Hollywood.

"Buy a girl a drink?"

This was what hostesses did. Plonked themselves down, got you to buy them a drink and then ordered house "champagne" at a price that dwarfed the national debt. George wasn't falling for that.

"Have mine," he said, pushing the pink gin across the table. "I haven't touched it."

"Thanks, love."

He realized at once that she wasn't a hostess. No hostess would have taken the drink.

"You're not working here, are you?"

"Nah. But ..."

"But what?"

"But I am ... working."

The penny dropped, clunking down inside him, rattling around in the rusty pinball machine of the soul.

"And you think I ..."

"You look as though you could do with something. I could ... make you happy ... just for a while I could make you happy."

George heard a voice very like his own say, "How much?"

"Not up front, love. That's just vulgar."

"I haven't got a lot of cash on me."

"'S OK. I take cheques."

She had a room three flights up in Bridle Lane. Clothed she was gorgeous, naked she was irresistible. If George died on the train home he would die happy.

She had one hand on his b.a.l.l.s and was kissing him in one ear he was priapic as Punch. He was on the edge, seconds away from entry, sheathed in a frenchie, when the door burst open, his head turned sharply and a flash bulb went off in his eyes.

When the stars cleared he found himself facing a big bloke in a dark suit, clutching a Polaroid camera and smiling smugly at him.

"Get dressed, Mr Horsfield. Meet me in the Stork Cafe in Berwick Street. You're not there in fifteen minutes this goes to your wife."

The square cardboard plate shot from the base of the camera and took form before his eyes.

He fell back on the pillow and groaned. He'd know a Russian accent anywhere. He'd been set up trussed up like a turkey.

"Oh ... s.h.i.t."

"Sorry, love. But, y'know. It's a job. Gotta make a livin' somehow."

George's wits were gathering slowly cohering into a fuzzy knot of meaning.

"You mean they pay you to ... frame blokes like me?"

"'Fraid so. Prozzyin' ain't what it used to be."

The knot pulled tight.

"You take money for this?"

"O' course. I'm no Commie. It's a job. I get paid. Up front."

He had a memory somewhere of her telling him that was vulgar, but he sidestepped it.

"Paid to get you out of yer trousers, into bed, do what I do till Boris gets here."

"What you do?"

"You know, love ... the other."

"You mean s.e.x?"

"If it gets that far. He was a bit early tonight."

A light shone in George's mind. The knot slackened off and the life began to crawl back into his startled groin.

"You've been paid to ... f.u.c.k me?"

"Language, love. But yeah."

"Would you mind awfully if we ... er ... finished the job?"

She thought for a moment.

"Why not? Least I can do. Besides, I like you. And old Boris is hardly going to b.u.g.g.e.r off after fifteen minutes. He needs you. He'll wait till dawn if he has to."

Walking to Berwick Street, along the Wh.o.r.e's Paradise of Meard Street, apprehension mingled with bliss. It was like that moment in Tobruk when Johnny Arab had stuck a pipe of super-strength hashish in front of him and he had looked askance at it but inhaled all the same. The headiness never quite offset and overwhelmed the sheer oddness of the situation.

In the caff a few late night "beatniks" (scruffbags, Sylvia would have called them) spun out cups of frothy coffee as long as they could and put the world to rights while Boris, if that really was his name, sat alone at a table next to the lavatory door.

George was at least half an hour late. Boris glanced at his watch but said nothing about it. Silently he slid the finished Polaroid congealed as George thought of it across the table, his finger never quite letting go of it.

"This type of camera only takes these shots. No negative. Hard to copy and I won't even try unless you make me. Do what we ask, Mr Horsfield, and you will not find us unreasonable people. Give us what we want and when we have it, you can have this. Frame it, burn it, I don't care but if we get what we want you can be a.s.sured this will be the only copy and your wife need never know."

George didn't even look at the photo. It might ruin a precious memory.

"What is it you want?"

Boris all but whispered, "Everything you're sending East of Suez."

"I see," said George, utterly baffled by this.

"Be here one week tonight. Nine o' clock. You bring evidence of something you've shipped out show willing as you people say and we'll brief you on what to look for next. In fact we'll give you a shopping list."

Boris stood up. A bigger b.u.g.g.e.r in a black suit came over and stood next to him. George hadn't even noticed this one was in the room.

"Well?" he said in Russian.

"A pushover," Boris replied.

The other man picked up the photo, glimmed it and said, "When did he shave off the moustache?"

"Who cares?" Boris replied.

Then he switched to English, said, "Next week" to George and they left.

George sat there. He'd learnt two things. They didn't know he spoke Russian, and they had the wrong Horsfield. George felt like laughing. It really was very funny but it didn't let him off the hook ... whatever they called him, Henry George Horsfield RAOC or Hugh George Horsfield RA ... they had still had a photograph of him in bed with a wh.o.r.e. It might end up in the hands of the right wife or the wrong wife, but he had no doubts it would all end up on a desk at the War Office if he screwed up now.

He got b.u.g.g.e.r all work done the next day. He had sneaked home very late, left a note for Sylvia saying he would be out early, caught the 7.01 train and got into the office very early. He could not face her across the breakfast table. He couldn't face anyone. He closed his office door, but after ten minutes decided that that was a dead giveaway and opened it again. He hoped Ted did not want to chat. He hoped Daft Elsie had no gossip as she brought round the tea.

At 5.30 in the evening he took his briefcase and sought out a caff in Soho. He sat in Old Compton Street staring into his deflating frothy coffee much as he had stared into his pink gin the night before. Oddly, most oddly, the same thing happened. He looked up from his cup and there she was. Right opposite him. A vision of beauty and betrayal.

"I was just pa.s.sin'. Honest. And I saw you sittin' in the window."

"You're wasting your time. I haven't got the money and after last night ..."

"I'm not on the pull. It's six o' clock and broad bleedin' daylight. I ... I ... I thought you looked lonely."

"I'm always lonely," he replied, surprised at his own honesty. "But what you see now is misery of your own making."

"You'll be fine. Just give old Boris what he wants."

"Has it occurred to you that that might be treason?"

"Nah ... it's not as if you're John Profumo or I'm Christine Keeler. We're small fry, we are."

Oh G.o.d, if only she knew.

"I can't give him what he wants. He wants secrets."

"Don't you know any?"

"Of course I do ... everything's a sodding secret. But ... but ... I'm RAOC. Do you know what that stands for?"

"Nah. Rags And Old Clothes?"

"Close. Our nickname is The Rag And Oil Company. Royal Army Ordnance Corps. I keep the British Army in saucepans and socks!"

"Ah."

"You begin to see? Boris will want secrets about weapons."

"O' course he will. How long have you got?"