The Tightrope Men / The Enemy

‘And the girl?’

‘Also asleep – in her own room.’

‘If he’s had five minutes’ sleep that’s five minutes more than I’ve had. Let’s go and wake the poor bastard up. Mrs Hansen will join us at the hotel.’

He stood up, and McCready said, ‘How much are you going to tell him?’

‘As much as I have to and no more,’ said Carey shortly. ‘Which may be more than I want to tell him. He’s already putting the screws on me through young Ian. He wants to see Meyrick’s dossier.’

‘You can’t expect him to carry out an impersonation without knowing something of Meyrick,’ said McCready reasonably.

‘Why did that damned girl have to turn up?’ grumbled Carey. ‘As though we don’t have enough trouble. I had a row with Harding this morning.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘George – I have no option. With Meyrick gone I have to use Denison. I’ll play fair; I’ll tell him the truth – maybe not all of it, but what I tell him will be true – and let him make up his own mind. And if he wants out that’s my hard luck.’

McCready noticed the reservation and shook his head. The truth, in Carey’s hands, could take on a chameleon-like quality. Denison did not stand a chance.

Carey said, ‘Something Iredale told me gave me the shudders. This silicone stuff that was rammed into Denison’s face is a polymer; it’s injected in liquid form and then it hardens in the tissues to the consistency of fat – and it’s permanent. If Denison wants to get his own face back it will be a major surgical operation – they’ll have to take his face apart to scrape the stuff out.’

McCready grimaced. ‘I take it that’s a part of the truth you’re not going to tell him.’

‘That – and a few other titbits from Harding.’ Carey stopped. ‘Well, here’s the hotel. Let’s get it over with.’

Denison woke from a deep sleep to hear hammering on his door. He got up groggily, put on the bathrobe, and opened the door. Carey said, ‘Sorry to waken you, but it’s about time we had a talk.’

Denison blinked at him. ‘Come in.’ He turned and went into the bathroom, and Carey, McCready and Mrs Hansen walked through into the bedroom. When Denison reappeared he was wiping his face with a towel. He stared at Diana Hansen. ‘I might have known.’

‘You two know each other,’ said Carey. ‘Mrs Hansen was keeping tabs on Meyrick.’ He drew back the curtain, letting sunlight spill into the room, and tossed an envelope on to the dressing-table. ‘Some more stuff on the girl. We have quite a few people in England running about in circles on your behalf.’

‘Not mine,’ corrected Denison. ‘Yours!’ He put down the towel. ‘Any moment from now she’s going to start playing “Do you remember when?” No information you can give me will help in that sort of guessing game.’

‘You’ll just have to develop a bad memory,’ said McCready.

‘I need to know more about Meyrick,’ insisted Denison.

‘And I’m here to tell you.’ Carey pulled the armchair forward. ‘Sit down and get comfortable. This is going to take a while.’ He sat in the other chair and pulled out a stubby pipe which he started to fill. McCready and Diana Hansen sat on the spare bed.

Carey struck a match and puffed at his pipe. ‘Before we start on Meyrick you ought to know that we discovered how, and when, the switch was made. We figured how we’d do a thing like that ourselves and then checked on it. You were brought in on a stretcher on July 8 and put in room three-sixty-three, just across the corridor. Meyrick was probably knocked out by a Mickey Finn in his nightly Ovaltine or something like that, and the switch was made in the wee, small hours.’

‘Meyrick was taken out next morning before you woke up,’ said McCready. ‘He was put into an ambulance, the hotel management co-operating, and driven to Pier Two at Vippetangen where he was put aboard a ship sailing to Copenhagen. Another ambulance was waiting there which took him God knows where.’

Carey said, ‘If you’d contacted the Embassy as soon as it happened we’d have been able to work all that out so damned fast that we could have been waiting at Copenhagen.’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Denison. ‘Would you have believed me any the quicker? It took you long enough to check anyway with your doctor and your tame psychiatrist.’

‘He’s right,’ said McCready.

‘Do you think that’s why it was done this way? To buy time?’

‘Could be,’ said McCready. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’

‘Oh, it worked all right. What puzzles me is what happened at the Spiralen the next day.’ Carey turned to Denison. ‘Have you got the doll and the note?’

Denison opened a drawer and handed them to Carey. He unfolded the single deckle-edged sheet and read the note aloud. ‘“Your Drammen Dolly awaits you at Spiraltoppen. Early morning. July 10.”’ He lifted the paper and sniffed delicately. ‘Scented, too. I thought that went out in the 1920s.’

Diana Hansen said, ‘This is the first I’ve heard of a note. I know about the doll, but not the note.’

‘It’s what took Denison to the Spiralen,’ said McCready.

‘Could I see it?’ said Diana, and Carey passed it to her. She read it and said pensively, ‘It could have been …’

‘What is it, Mrs Hansen?’ said Carey sharply.

‘Well, when Meyrick and I went to Drammen last week we lunched at the Spiraltoppen Restaurant.’ She looked a little embarrassed. ‘I had to go to the lavatory and I was away rather a long time. I had stomach trouble – some kind of diarrhoea.’

McCready grinned. ‘Even Intelligence agents are human,’ he said kindly.

‘When I got back Meyrick was talking to a woman and they seemed to be getting on well together. When I came up she went away.’

‘That’s all?’ asked Carey.

‘That’s all.’

He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I think there’s something you’re not telling us, Mrs Hansen.’

‘Well, it’s something about Meyrick. I was with him quite a lot during the last few weeks and he gave me the impression of being something of a womanizer – perhaps even a sexual athlete.’

A chuckle escaped from McCready. ‘Did he proposition you?’

‘He had as many arms as an octopus,’ she said. ‘I thought I wasn’t going to last out this operation without being raped. I think he’d go for anything on two legs that wore skirts, with the possible exception of Scotsmen – and I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’

‘Well, well,’ said Carey. ‘How little we know of our fellow men.’

Denison said, ‘He was divorced twice.’

‘So you think this note was to set up an assignation.’

‘Yes,’ said Diana.

‘But Meyrick wouldn’t have fallen for that, no matter how horny he was,’ said Carey. ‘He was too intelligent a man. When you and he went to Drammen last week he checked with me according to instructions. Since you were going with him I gave him the okay.’

‘Did Meyrick know Diana was working for you?’ asked Denison.

Carey shook his head. ‘No – we like to play loose. But Meyrick didn’t find the note.’ He pointed his pipe stem at Denison. ‘You did – and you went to the Spiralen. Tell me, did the men who attacked you give the impression that they wanted to capture or to kill you?’

‘I didn’t stop to ask them,’ said Denison acidly.