The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ said McCready. He left the room.

Carey loosened his tie with a jerk and sat biting his thumbnail. He looked up as McCready came back holding a book. ‘What have you got there?’

‘London telephone directory.’

‘Give me that,’ said Carey, and grabbed it. ‘Let’s see – Dennis, Dennis, Dennis … Dennison. There’s a George and two plain Gs – neither in Hampstead.’ He sat back, looking pleased.

McCready took the book and flipped the pages. After a minute he said, ‘Denison, Giles … Hampstead. He spells it with one “n”.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ said Carey, looking stricken. He recovered. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing. He picked the name of someone he knows. His daughter’s boy-friend, perhaps.’

‘Perhaps,’ said McCready non-committally.

Carey drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘I’ll stake my life that this is Meyrick; anything else would be too ridiculous.’ His fingers were suddenly stilled. ‘Mrs Hansen,’ he said. ‘She’s been closer to him than anybody. Did she have anything to say?’

‘She reported last night that she’d met him. He’d broken a date with her in the morning and excused it by pleading illness. Said he’d been in bed all morning.’

‘Had he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she notice anything about him – anything odd or unusual?’

‘Only that he had a cold and that he’d stopped smoking. He said cigarettes tasted like straw.’

Carey, a pipe-smoker, grunted. ‘They taste like straw to me without a cold. But he recognised her.’

‘They had a drink and a conversation – about morals and religion, she said.’

‘That does it,’ said Carey. ‘Meyrick is ready to pontificate about anything at the drop of a hat, whether he knows anything about it or not.’ He rubbed his chin and said grudgingly, ‘Trouble is, he usually talks sense – he has a good brain. No, this is Meyrick, and Meyrick is as flabby as a bladder of lard – that’s why we have to coddle him on this operation. Do you really think that Meyrick could stand up against four men with guns and knives and coshes? The man could hardly break the skin on the top of a custard. He’s gone out of his tiny, scientific mind and his tale of improbable violence is just to save his precious superiority, as I said before.’

‘And what about the operation?’

‘As far as Meyrick is concerned the operation is definitely off,’ said Carey decisively. ‘And, right now, I don’t see how it can be done without him. I’ll cable London to that effect as soon as I’ve had another talk with him.’ He paused. ‘You’d better come along, George. I’m going to need a witness on this one or else London will have me certified.’

They left the office and walked along the corridor. Outside the room where Meyrick was held Carey put his hand on McCready’s arm. ‘Hold yourself in, George. This might be rough.’

They found Meyrick still sitting at the desk in brooding silence, ignoring the man he knew only as Ian who sat opposite. Ian looked up at Carey and shrugged eloquently.

Carey stepped forward. ‘Dr Meyrick, I’m sorry to …’

‘My name is Denison. I told you that.’ His voice was cold.

Carey softened his tone. ‘All right, Mr Denison; if you prefer it that way. I really think you ought to see a doctor. I’m arranging for it.’

‘And about time,’ said Denison. ‘This is hurting like hell.’

‘What is?’

Denison was pulling his sweater from his trousers. ‘This bloody knife wound. Look at it.’

Carey and McCready bent to look at the quarter-inch deep slash along Denison’s side. It would, Carey estimated, take sixteen stitches to sew it up.

Their heads came up together and they looked at each other with a wild surmise.

SEVEN (#ulink_058812ac-6f6d-54e7-b740-763129c488b3)

Carey paced restlessly up and down McCready’s office. His tie was awry and his hair would have been tousled had it not been so close-cropped because he kept running his hand through it. ‘I still don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s too bloody incredible.’

He swung on McCready. ‘George, supposing you went to bed tonight, here in Oslo, and woke up tomorrow, say, in a New York hotel, wearing someone else’s face. What would be your reaction?’

‘I think I’d go crazy,’ said McCready soberly. He smiled slightly. ‘If I woke up with your face I would go crazy.’

Carey ignored the wisecrack. ‘But Denison didn’t go crazy,’ he said meditatively. ‘All things considered, he kept his cool remarkably well.’

‘If he is Denison,’ remarked McCready. ‘He could be Meyrick and quite insane.’

Carey exploded into a rage. ‘For God’s sake! All along you’ve been arguing that he’s Denison; now you turn around and say he could be Meyrick.’

McCready eyed him coolly. ‘The role of devil’s advocate suits me, don’t you think?’ He tapped the desk. ‘Either way, the operation is shot to hell.’

Carey sat down heavily. ‘You’re right, of course. But if this is a man called Denison then there are a lot of questions to be answered. But first, what the devil do we do with him?’

‘We can’t keep him here,’ said McCready. ‘For the same reason we didn’t keep Meyrick here. The Embassy is like a fishbowl.’

Carey cocked his head. ‘He’s been here for over two hours. That’s about normal for a citizen being hauled over the coals for a serious driving offence. You suggest we send him back to the hotel?’

‘Under surveillance.’ McCready smiled. ‘He says he has a date with a redhead for dinner.’

‘Mrs Hansen,’ said Carey. ‘Does he know about her?’

‘No.’

‘Keep it that way. She’s to stick close to him. Give her a briefing and ask her to guard him from interference. He could run into some odd situations. And talk to him like a Dutch uncle. Put the fear of God into him so that he stays in the hotel. I don’t want him wandering around loose.’

Carey drew a sheet of paper towards him and scribbled on it. ‘The next thing we want are doctors – tame ones who will ask the questions we want asked and no others. A plastic surgeon and –’ he smiled at McCready bleakly – ‘and an alienist. The problem must be decided one way or the other.’

‘We can’t wait until they arrive,’ said McCready.

‘Agreed,’ said Carey. ‘We’ll work on the assumption that a substitution has been made – that this man is Denison. We know when the substitution was made – in the early hours of yesterday morning. Denison was brought in – how?’

‘On a stretcher – he must have been unconscious.’

‘Right!’ said Carey. ‘A hospital patient in transit under the supervision of a trained nurse and probably a doctor. And they’d have taken a room on the same floor as Meyrick. The switch was made and Meyrick taken out yesterday morning – probably in an ambulance at the back entrance of the hotel by arrangement with the management. Hotels don’t like stretchers being paraded through the front lobby.’

‘I’ll get on to it,’ said McCready. ‘It might be an idea to check on all the people who booked in on the previous day, regardless of the floor they stayed on. I don’t think this was a two man job.’

‘I don’t, either. And you check the comings and goings for the past week – somebody must have been watching Meyrick for a long time.’