The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street Part 10

'Croft! Croft, I'm stealing this one. Last one, I promise.'

'I don't know why the Home Office must fall prey to the Foreign Office's parties,' the senior clerk said waspishly.

'Any particular reason for the skates?'

'Conservation of motion.'

Fanshaw grinned. 'You'll have him back by next Friday, don't worry. This way, Mr ... '

'Steepleton.' He had to hurry to keep up. Fanshaw walked quickly. Soon they were on the ground floor again, in the long, ornate gallery that connected the Home and Foreign Offices. A full-length portrait of the Queen hung on the wall above the staircase, which creaked with stately echoes. Mahogany. 'I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what's going on-'

'What's going on is that the Foreign Office is having a ball,' Fanshaw said, 'and Foreign Office b.a.l.l.s come with a Himalayan range of administration. It's vital that various amba.s.sadors come, but that they each speak to so-and-so or such-and-such at a particular time, and no, they can't sit with the Indians, and what, we haven't got green tea, and is Italy coming, because if so, Hungary isn't you understand the gist.' He shot an arch look at the Queen. 'And that of course takes priority over whatever coup might be developing in China, or whether Kiyotaka Kuroda wants to invade Korea again. The diplomatic negotiations surrounding the ball inevitably leech staff away from areas considered less key. If we don't have British citizens in the country, no one cares. That of course is a stupid view, so I'm drafting people in from other departments. No one here speaks j.a.panese, and we need someone other than me on the desk.'

'But I don't speak-'

'Yes, but you'll know what it sounds like, which is a start, and you're in a position at home to learn quickly,' Fanshaw said, turning sharply left into what could have been a war-room. The walls were covered entirely with maps, and six or seven men worked at desks lined up as they would have been at school. Stacks of books stood everywhere, and somebody had even made a serviceable ottoman from one, on which now stood a tray of tea-making equipment. One of the men was on the telephone to what sounded like a journalist. Fanshaw motioned Thaniel to the spare desk in the corner. 'j.a.pan there. I'll be around, of course, and when you aren't busy, you'll be doing the usual. Telegraphy, accounts, and so forth.'

'Hold on, learn quickly? You said I'd be back at the HO by Friday.'

'I lied, obviously.'

'What? I don't know what you do here.'

Fanshaw waved his hand. 'Sit down. Mostly you'll be talking to the chaps who own the Knightsbridge village, but there are other j.a.panese scattered about London, and since there aren't enough of them to open an emba.s.sy, they come straight to us if they get stuck. The amba.s.sador that's Arinori, he isn't here today but mind out for him or he'll have you signed up for foreign service by Tuesday keeps office hours here three days a week. You'll help with lost papers, advice about housing, language anything, really, that people might have difficulty with. That stack of paper there is requests filed in the last week. Work through those you can, and hand on to me those you can't. Johnson here will explain how to fill out any forms and suchlike.'

The man he had motioned to, Johnson, looked up and noticed Thaniel for the first time. He smiled the brief smile of a busy person. 'Morning.'

'Johnson, this is Mr Steepleton, I've stolen him from the HO telegraphy boys.'

'Oh, thank G.o.d,' he said, throwing down his codebook and motioning to Thaniel to come over. 'Here, send this for me. I'm talking to Shanghai, but it's taking an age, and Fanshaw's stolen our telegraphy chap for the fellows dealing with America. See you, Francis,' he added.

Fanshaw had gone. Thaniel sighed and sat down at the telegraph, automatically sideways, and drew out the transcript paper gently. This telegraph was a far superior machine to the battered ones in the Home Office; it was running faster and more smoothly, and he could hear from the precise clicking of the mechanisms that the paper was not going to screw itself up after three and a half inches. He held it from habit anyway. The message was a request for a form that confirmed Britain knew about a Mr Feversham's lost pa.s.sport, and would let him through the gate at Dover.

Once he had sent a message back via the operator at the main exchange, he wound the transcript spindle tighter to keep it from rattling as it had done before. He was clicking the machine closed again when he became aware that Johnson was watching him.

'I don't suppose you could do this one for me too?' the man asked meekly. 'I'd soldier on myself, but our last chap wasn't half as quick as that and it won't take a minute at the rate you go. Can you hear the code?'

'Yes. You start to after a while.'

'Is that so? That's remarkable.'

'It's not difficult.'

'Oh, yes, and I'm sure pure mathematics isn't so difficult once one gets the hang of it,' Johnson laughed. 'Anyway, glad to have you with us. Nice break from the norm to have a working chap who knows what he's doing, rather than some duffer fresh out of Eton and killing time till Pater gets him an emba.s.sy post.'

'I'm sure,' Thaniel said, shaking his head once. He quite liked boarding-school men; there were plenty of them around Whitehall, and though they were a different species to everybody else they spent a good deal of time good-naturedly pretending not to be. He glanced up when Johnson did not dictate anything and saw that the other clerks were all exchanging significant smiles over his head, although he didn't understand exactly what the signification was. 'Ready?'

'Um yes. Yes. So: h.e.l.lo Henry, stop. I have a new fellow on the telegraph now, stop-'

'You can just talk,' Thaniel said to the key.

'Really? I thought it had to be specially phrased ... you know?'

'I'll do it for you, we'll go quicker.'

'Oh. Splendid. Gosh, you know your work, don't you?'

'There are monkeys that know it. Telegraph, stop ... '

After that, Johnson was off. Not infrequently, he stopped his dictation so that he could explain what he was talking about, and the others chipped in. They seemed pleased to have somebody to show off to, and Thaniel listened and remembered everything, because he had never heard of any of it. The message to Shanghai was a reply to diplomatic dispatches, and therefore long; there were Chinese customs scams to address, and a strange cult in the east, and the problem of British botanists sneaking into forbidden regions in order to collect tea samples. After the Shanghai message, the dispatches from Tokyo ticked through, only half intelligible because the minister there spoke in a mad English-j.a.panese pidgin full of gozaimases and shimases that Thaniel had half-heard at the show village the day before, but whose meaning he couldn't tell. After a while, Johnson wrote out a list of them.

Despite their enthusiasm, the others seemed oddly wary of him, and he was not invited to wherever they went for lunch. He didn't mind. The quiet was a chance to catch up with himself. He sat alone at the j.a.pan desk and learned the list of words. The more he looked at them, the more remarkable it seemed that Mori managed to speak with no accent. He was still reading when his eye caught on the filing cabinet opposite him. It was marked 'j.a.panese Aliens'.

He stood slowly and opened the drawer for NR, which was dominated by Nakanos and Nakamuras. There were only two people whose name was Mori. Keita was the second. Inside the thin file were copies of immigration forms. The forms were a sort of printed certificate divided into columns, where the information was written by hand and signed by the Customs Officer of, in this case, Portsmouth. He read through the details.

Name: Baron Mori, Keita b. June 14, 1845 Country of citizenship: j.a.pan Country of embarkation: j.a.pan Occupation: Governmental aide to Mr H. Ito, Minister of the Interior Certificate date: January 12, 1883.

There was nothing else except a letter of reference from Mr Ito that acted as proof of ident.i.ty. It was sealed with something official-looking in j.a.panese, and the paper had the crest of the Emperor at the top. Thaniel let the file tilt down on to the top edge of the cabinet. Mori had mentioned his cousin was lord of somewhere. It should not have been a surprise to learn his name began with 'baron', but the thought had never occurred. With his heart tightening, he read the letter and certificates again and realised he had to let Williamson know, before the police tried to arrest a n.o.bleman for having diamonds.

The telegraph clicked.

Scotland Yard c/o Foreign Office ...

The Home Office machines printed code only in pencil lead, but this one produced text in a pretty, flowing script like handwriting. Soon the first message was followed by a second, and a third. The main exchange must have collected everything for the Yard and sent it on all at once, like ordinary post.

To A Williamson I had the watch examined by Spindle as you asked and- He tore out the transcript paper and sat with the reel clamped between his hands while the rest of the message played out. The telegraph carried on printing letters straight on to the paper roller, which, being small, soon developed three or four layers of illegible palimpsest before the ink ran together and turned it black. As if the message were completely unremarkable, the next message followed it, and the next. He took them down by hand. Once they had stopped, he unclipped the roller and rolled it over a spare sheet of paper to clean off the ink. He clipped it back on. Having put the transcript reel back in too, he sat still with his hands pressed together between his knees, looking at the ink smudges on the piece of paper in front of him.

'Everything all right?' Fanshaw had arrived silently. 'Your face is rather dark.'

He straightened. 'No, it's my ordinary face.'

'The others are huddling outside over their sandwiches, you know. They seem frightened. Did you say something stern about cotton mills?'

'No? I don't know anything about cotton mills.'

Fanshaw laughed. 'I see. How are you getting on?'

'I looked up Mori in that cabinet. Apparently he's baron of somewhere.'

Fanshaw's eyes widened with interest. 'That kind of Mori. Really.'

'Are they famous?'

'They're a huge samurai clan in j.a.pan. Lots of money, very conservative, usually. Their current head is the Duke of Choushu, which is very like being Duke of Northumberland. O-oh ... I know. I know; there was a Mori on Minister Ito's staff. Left a while ago. I remember someone said in dispatches he'd upped sticks to make clockwork in England. Never thought I'd meet him. Bizarre.'

'Maybe government work was boring.'

Fanshaw laughed. 'Doubt it. Ito's going to be prime minister as soon as he can w.a.n.gle a cabinet system, not a shadow of a doubt. Anyway, a present for you,' he added, and dropped a j.a.panese dictionary on Thaniel's desk. It landed with a bang that made the papers jump. 'Learn that.'

'All of it?'

'All of it.'

Thaniel angled the cover open with his fingernail and winced he had used his left hand. The tiny exertion made the scab on his arm crack. On the tissue-thin pages, the text was minuscule. 'But don't you speak-'

'I'll be here for only a third of the time; I have a dozen other things to do.'

'What things?'

'Everything,' Fanshaw sighed. He dropped into his chair. From his desk drawer he took out a tweed pincushion, full of gla.s.s-headed pins, and a piece of fabric with a needle pushed through it. Thaniel could only see the underside of the st.i.tching, but he thought it was half an ivy pattern. 'Though I swear I spend at least half my time directing Lord b.l.o.o.d.y Carrow to Lord Leveson's office. It isn't as though he's moved in twenty years. These people seem to think it unnecessary to memorise the layout of a building when fellows like me are around to do it for them.' He cast around aimlessly. 'I've forgotten something. I've always forgotten something. You know how one ends up with a constant nagging sense that one has walked out of one's house without some vital item of clothing and so one lays out a second pair of trousers for the express purpose of forgetting them? Tickets!' he said suddenly. 'FO employees get tickets to the ball, you can pick one up in Chivers' office round there. Wouldn't want you to miss it. Not after all the effort I've put into the d.a.m.n thing. Oh, and you'll need to sign some more secrecy oaths, I shouldn't wonder. If you thought HO material was sensitive, wait until you see what comes through the wires here. The salary is proportionately enlarged, I should add.'

'I ... my G.o.d, you were serious?'

'Quite.'

'Thank you.'

Fanshaw waved it away. 'Can't waste a j.a.panese speaker on Home Office telegraphy.' He sighed again, falling back into his previous lethargy. He looped the needle through a new st.i.tch and the green thread hissed quietly.

'What are you doing?' said Thaniel, who had held it in for as long as he could, which wasn't long.

'What? Oh, the embroidery. Symptom of overwork, I'm afraid. If I don't work at it a bit every now and then I go gently mad.'

'Why does embroidery help?'

'You are such a genuine fellow, aren't you. I think it's to do with doing something with one's hands that doesn't much involve one's brain. I suspect it might be a developing neurosis, I have been meaning to see someone. Runs in the family. I'm not a patch on my brother, you know. He has to go around the estate counting the railings. There are quite a lot of railings. I suppose numbers, being immutable, are comforting when one feels one isn't quite in control of things. Three will always be three.'

Thaniel nodded, slowly. He had never understood proper mathematics. There was always a gaping hole in the middle of the idea namely, that he had never been able to see what three was. From what he could tell, it was a thing of its own, but he had only been able to envisage it as its sign, which was like trying to conceive of a piano by looking hard enough at the letters in the word.

'I was about to make some tea,' he said eventually. 'Would that help?'

Fanshaw put his hands together and leaned back in his chair as though he had arrived in the Promised Land after forty years wandering a tealess desert. 'Rather, thank you. Oh, by the way, all telegrams for the Yard are coming here, so when they come in, do take them down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, won't you?'

For the last week, cracks had been baking into the mudbanks of the Thames, but the Home Office cellar was cold. Some of its clutter, and therefore its insulation, was gone now, and when he went down, the young officer at the front desk was holding his hands around his lamp. Among the old filing cabinets and the bra.s.sy noises of the men moving about in heavy boots, Williamson looked criminal in a pair of fingerless gloves.

'I think I saw the Franklin expedition in a cupboard back there,' Thaniel said.

'We're just missing dog teams and- ice picks,' Williamson said gloomily. 'Are those our telegrams from the FO? What are you doing with them?'

'Francis Fanshaw recruited me this morning.'

'Oh, that's good.' He took the transcripts, and Thaniel's handwritten notes. He put them aside. 'So,' he said, and his voice dropped as it did when his stammer was about to disappear for a while. 'Frederick Spindle was in here this morning talking about hidden diamonds and extra mechanisms.'

Thaniel moved a chair across and sat, arms folded in the cold. He was in his shirtsleeves. 'I've come about that too. I've just looked up Mori in the oriental desk records. He's a baron in j.a.pan. His family is rich. Fanshaw says very rich. I don't think the diamonds signify.'

'What's he doing making watches in Knightsbridge?'

He shook his head. It was not impossible to explain Mori's oddnesses, but he was wary of trying to do it now. He would rose-tint them too much.

Williamson leant his elbows against the table and pushed his fingertips under his scarf. 'But it's not quite right, all the same.'

'It's not quite wrong either.'

Williamson's sharp eyes caught on him for too long and read his bones. 'Nevertheless,' he said, more slowly, 'the watch arrived at your flat on the night of the threat. It opened on the day of the bomb. The alarm went off just before. And special mechanisms that measure where the bearer is at a certain time? I don't know what that was intended for, but Spindle says it's one of the most complicated pieces of machinery he's ever seen. You don't make the most complicated piece of machinery ever seen by one of London's best watchmakers if you only want to set an alarm, do you?'

'I took the room he was letting,' Thaniel said quietly. 'To keep an eye on him. I don't say I think he's innocent. I'm saying you can't a.s.sume the diamonds are payment when the man's from money. Old money, from the way Fanshaw talked.'

Williamson sat back a little. 'Well, that's good. That's very good.' He looked sorry but did not say it. 'You know, you should be in Special Branch, not typing for Fanshaw. You're steady enough.'

He smiled. 'Out of interest, how often do Special Branch officers die when they let slip to the Irish?'

'If they do let slip? Always.'

'It's good to work with efficient people, though, isn't it, so it's all swings and roundabouts.'

Williamson coughed as he laughed. 'Tell me about Mori.'

'What kind of thing?'

'What's your impression of him, forgetting the clockwork mysteries?'

'He's kind,' said Thaniel. He looked down at the floor, which was scuffed in semicircle shapes where the desk had been pivoted. 'He's afraid of heights, he doesn't like next door's children. He has a pet octopus made of clockwork. It collects socks. They seem to know him well at the oriental show village in Hyde Park, so I don't think he is the completely solitary sort.'

'How are you getting on?'

'Well enough.'

'To the extent that you could have a good look around the house without raising suspicion?'

'I couldn't take up the floorboards,' Thaniel said slowly.

'No need to take up floorboards. I'd like you to search for correspondence. If he is involved with the Irish, he might have burned everything pertinent, but he might not have. People feel safe at home; he might have kept letters, pamphlets ... they're not above blackmail, either.'

His teeth stung. 'All right.'

'If you find anything, tell me straightaway. Spindle's final report should come in soon, but I can't arrest anybody for suggestive clockwork and there's ... well. Pressure from on high.'

'You look like it,' he said.

'No, no, say what you really think,' Williamson tried to huff, but then put his hand to his head. 'Do I really?'

'Dolly, it will be all right. I thought you'd already arrested most of the men involved in all this?'

'Yes. We knew who they were months beforehand, but couldn't take them until after we found the bombs. No evidence otherwise. But no b.l.o.o.d.y bombmaker. If we don't have him, it will be the devil's work trying to connect the rest of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds direct to the explosion, and none of them know; no man knows more than he needs to lest he's arrested. Just be careful. If you spook this man, the case might ... '

Thaniel sat back. Williamson must have seen his expression close, because he lifted a placatory hand and then pulled it over his jaw.

'Don't imagine for a moment that I don't know this is a vast administrative c.o.c.k-up, resting so much on a civilian.'