Part 22 (1/2)

”Not a finger. Not a mini-digit.”

”You all sit together?”

”In a big room and I'm the t.i.tular head of it. Very t.i.t-ular indeed.”

”And I've had it said to me he's something of a misogynist,” I said, fis.h.i.+ng.

Gorst gave a shrill laugh. ”Cyril? A misogynist? b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. He just hates the girls. Won't speak to them, not apart from good morning. Won't come to the pre-Christmas party if he can help it, in case he has to kiss them under the mistletoe.”

He recrossed his legs, indicating that he had decided to make a statement. ”Cyril Arthur Frewin-Saint Cyril-is a highly reliable, eminently conscientious, totally bald, incredibly boring clerk of the old school. Saint Cyril, though punctilious to a fault, has in my view reached his natural promotion ceiling in his line of country or profession. Saint Cyril is set in his ways. Saint Cyril does what he does, one hundred percent. Amen.”

”Politics?”

”Not in my house, thank you.”

”And he's not workshy?”

”Did I say he was, squire?”

”No, to the contrary, I was quoting from the file. If there's extra work to be done, Cyril will always roll his sleeves up, stay on in the lunch hour, the evenings and so forth. That's still the case, is it? No slackening off of his enthusiasm?”

”Our Cyril is ready to oblige at all hours, to the pleasure of those who have families, wives or a nice piece of Significant Other to return to. He'll do the early mornings, he'll do lunch hours, he'll do evening watch, except for opera nights, of course. Cyril never counts the cost. Latterly, I will admit, he has been slightly less inclined to martyr himself, but that is no doubt a purely temporary, suspension of service. Our Cyril does have his little moods. Who does not, your eminence?”

”So recently a slackening off, you would say?”

”Not of his work, never. Cyril is your total workslave, always has been. Merely of his willingness to be put upon by his more human colleagues. Come five-thirty these days, Saint Cyril packs up his desk and goes home with the rest of us. He does not, for instance, offer to replace the late s.h.i.+ft and remain solo incommunicado till nine o'clock and lock up, which was what he used to do.”

”You can't put a date to that change of habit, can you?”

I enquired as boringly as I could manage, turning dutifully to a fresh page of my notebook.

Curiously enough, Gorst could. He pursed his lips. He frowned. He raised his girlish eyebrows and pressed his chins into his grimy s.h.i.+rt collar. He made a vast show of ruminating. And he finally remembered. ”The last time Cyril Frewin did young Burton's evening watch was Midsummer's Day. I keep a log, you see. Security. I also have quite an impressive memory, which I don't always care to reveal.”

I was secretly impressed, but not by Gorst. Three days after Modrian left London for Moscow, Cyril Frewin had ceased to work late, I was thinking. I had other questions that were clamouring to be asked. Did the Tank boast electronic typewriters? Did the cypher clerks have access to them? Did Gorst? But I was afraid of arousing his suspicions.

”You mentioned his love of opera,” I said. ”Could you tell me a little more about that?”

”No I could not, since we do not get blow-by-blow accounts, and we do not ask for them. However, he does come in wearing a pressed dark suit on his opera days, if he doesn't bring his dinner jacket in a suitcase, and he does impart what I would refer to as a state of high if controlled excitement somewhat similar to other forms of antic.i.p.ation, which I will not mention.”

”But he has a regular seat, for instance? A subscription seat? It's only for the record. As you say, he's a bit short of relaxing pastimes otherwise.”

”As I think I told you, squire, alas, me and opera were not made for each other. Put down 'opera buff' on his form and you're covered for your relaxing pastime is my advice.”

”Thank you. I will.”

I turned another page. ”And really no enemies that you can think of?” I said, my pencil hovering over my notebook.

Gorst became serious. The beer was wearing off. ”Cyril is laughed at, Captain, I'll admit. But he takes it in good part. Cyril is not disliked.”

”No one who would speak ill of him, for instance?”

”I can think of no single reason whatever why anyone should speak ill of Cyril Arthur Frewin. The British civil servant, he may be sullen but he's not malicious. Cyril does his duty, as we all do. We're a happy s.h.i.+p. I wouldn't mind if you put that down, too.”

”I gather he went to Salzburg for Christmas this year. And previous years too, is that right?”

”That is correct. Cyril always takes his leave at Christmas. He goes to Salzburg, he hears the music. It's the one point on which he will make no concession to the rest of the Tank. There's some of the young ones try to complain about it, but I won't let them. 'Cyril makes it up to you in other ways,' I tell them. 'Cyril's got his seniority, he loves his trip to Salzburg for the music, he has his little ways, and that's how it's going to stay.”

”Does he leave a holiday address behind when he goes?”

Gorst didn't know, but at my request he telephoned his personnel department and obtained it. The same hotel, the last four years running. He's been keeping company with Modrian for four years too, I thought, remembering the letter. Four years of Salzburg, four years of Modrian, ending in a highly solitary life.

”Does he take a friend, would you know?”

”Cyril never had a friend in his life, skipper.” Gorst yawned. ”Not one he'd take on holiday, that's for sure. Shall we do a lunch next time? They tell me you boys have very nifty expense accounts when you care to give them a tickle.”

”Does he talk about his Salzburg trips at all when he comes back? The fun he's had - the music he's heard - anything like that?”

Thanks to Sally, I suppose, I had learned that people were expected to have fun.

Having made a brief show of thinking, Gorst shook his head. ”If Cyril has fun, squire, it's very, very private,” he said, with a last smirk.

That wasn't Sally's idea of fun at all.

From my office at the Pool I booked a secure line to Vienna and spoke to Toby Esterhase, who with his infinite talent for survival had recently been made Head of Station.

”I want you to shake out the Weisse Rose in Salzburg for me, Toby. Cyril Frewin, British subject. Stayed there every Christmas for the last four years. I want to know when he arrived, how long he stayed, whether he's stayed there before, who with, how much the bills come to and what he gets up to. Concert tickets, excursions, meals, women, boys, celebrations - anything you can get. But don't raise local eyebrows, whatever you do. Be a divorce agent or something.”

Toby was predictably appalled. ”Ned, listen to me. Ned, this is actually completely impossible. I'm in Vienna, okay? Salzburg, that's like the other side of the globe. This city is buzzing like a beehouse. I need more staff, Ned. You got to tell Burr. He doesn't understand the pressures here. Get me two more guys, we do anything you want, no problem. Sorry.”

He asked for a week. I said three days. He said he'd try his best and I believed him. He said he had heard a rumour that Mabel and I had broken up. I denied it.

Ever since I can remember, watchers have been most at home in condemned houses handy for bus routes and the airport. Monty's choice for his own headquarters was an unlikely Edwardian Palazzo in Baron's Court. From the tiled hall, a stone staircase curled grandly through five pokey floors to a stained-gla.s.s skylight. As I climbed, doors flew open and shut like a French farce as his strange crew, in varying stages of undress, scurried between changing room, cafeteria and briefing room, their eyes averted from the stranger. I arrived in a garret once a painter's studio. Somewhere a women's foursome was playing noisy ping-pong. Closer at hand, two male voices were singing Blake's ”Jerusalem” under the shower.

I had not set eyes on Monty for a long time, but neither the years between nor his promotion to Head Watcher had aged him. A few grey hairs, a sharper edge to his hollow cheeks. He was not a natural conversationalist, and for a while we just sat and sipped our tea.

”Frewin, then,” he said finally.

”Frewin,” I said.

Like a marksman, Monty had a way of making his own particular area of quiet. ”Frewin's a funny one, Ned. He's not being normal. Now of course we don't know what normal is, do we, not really, not for Cyril, not apart from what you pick up from hearsay and that. Postman, milkman, neighbours, the usual. Everyone talks to a window cleaner, you'd be amazed. Or a Telecom engineer who's lost his way with a junction box. We've only been on him two days, all the same.”

With Monty, when he talked like this, you just pinned your ears back and bided your time.

”And nights, of course,” he added. ”If you count nights. Cyril's not sleeping, that's for sure. More prowling, judging by his windows and his teacups in the morning. And his music. One of his neighbours is thinking of complaining to him. She never has before, but she might this time. 'Whatever's come over him?' she says. 'Handel for breakfast is one thing, but Handel at three in the morning's a bit of another.'

She thinks he's having his change. She says men get like that at his age, same as women. We wouldn't know about that, would we?”

I grinned. And again bided my time. ”She does, though,” Monty said reflectively. ”Her old man's gone off with a supply teacher from the comprehensive. She's not at all sure she'll have him back. Nearly raped our pretty boy who'd come to read the meter. Here - how's Mabel?” he demanded.

I wondered whether he too had heard the rumour; but I decided that if he had, he would not have asked me.