The Spy Quartet: An Expensive Place to Die, Spy Story, Yesterday’s Spy, Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

He spoke softly and angrily. ‘The trouble with you people from hospitals,’ he said, ‘you think you’re the only normal people left alive.’

Maria could think of no answer. She drove forward. From behind her the voice of the Englishman said, ‘I’m sorry to be causing you all this trouble.’ He said it in English hoping that the tone of his voice would convey his meaning.

‘It’s all right,’ said Maria.

‘You speak English!’ said the man. ‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Is your leg hurting you?’ She tried to make it as professional and clinical as she knew how.

‘It’s nothing. I did it running down the road to find a telephone. It’s hilarious really: those four dead and me unscratched except for a strained knee running down the road.’

‘Your car?’

‘That’s done for. Cheap car, Ford Anglia. Crankcase sticking through the rear axle the last I saw of it. Done for. It wasn’t the lorry driver’s fault. Poor sod. It wasn’t my fault either, except that I was going too fast. I always drive too fast, everyone tells me that. But I couldn’t have avoided this lot. He was right in the centre of the road. You do that in a heavy truck on these high camber roads. I don’t blame him. I hope he doesn’t blame me too much either.’

Maria didn’t answer; she hoped he’d go to sleep so she could think about this new situation.

‘Can you close the window?’ he asked. She rolled it up a little, but kept it a trifle open. The tension of her claustrophobia returned and she knocked the window handle with her elbow, hoping to open it a little more without the boy’s noticing.

‘You were a bit sharp with the policeman,’ said the boy. Maria grunted an affirmative.

‘Why?’ asked the boy. ‘Don’t you like policemen?’

‘I married one.’

‘Go on,’ said the boy. He thought about it. ‘I never got married. I lived with a girl for a couple of years …’ He stopped.

‘What happened?’ said Maria. She didn’t care. Her worries were all upon the road ahead. How many road blocks were out tonight? How thoroughly would they examine papers and cargoes?

‘She chucked me,’ said the boy.

‘Chucked?’

‘Rejected me. What about you?’

‘I suppose mine chucked me,’ said Maria.

‘And you became an ambulance driver,’ said the boy with the terrible simplicity of youth.

‘Yes,’ said Maria and laughed aloud.

‘You all right?’ asked the boy anxiously.

‘I’m all right,’ said Maria. ‘But the nearest hospital that’s any good is across the border in Belgium. You lie back and groan and behave like an emergency when we get to the frontier. Understand?’

Maria deliberately drove eastward, cutting around the Forêt de St Michel through Watigny and Signy-le-Petit. She’d cross the border at Riezes.

‘Suppose they are all closed down at the frontier?’ asked the boy.

‘Leave it with me,’ said Maria. She cut back through a narrow lane, offering thanks that it hadn’t begun to rain. In this part of the world the mud could be impassable after half an hour’s rain.

‘You certainly know your way around,’ said the boy. ‘Do you live near here?’

‘My mother still does.’

‘Not your father?’

‘Yes, he does too,’ said Maria. She laughed.

‘Are you all right?’ the boy asked again.

‘You’re the casualty,’ said Maria. ‘Lie down and sleep.’

‘I’m sorry to be a bother,’ said the boy.

Pardon me for breathing, thought Maria; the English were always apologizing.

38

Already the brief butterfly summer of the big hotels is almost gone. Some of the shutters are locked and the waiters are scanning the ads for winter resort jobs. The road snakes past the golf club and military hospital. Huge white dunes, shining in the moonlight like alabaster temples, lean against the grey Wehrmacht gun emplacements. Between the points of sand and the cubes of concrete nightjars swoop open-mouthed upon the moths and insects. The red glow of Ostend is nearer now and yellow trams rattle alongside the motor road and over the bridge by the Royal Yacht Club where white yachts – sails neatly rolled and tied – sleep bobbing on the grey water like seagulls.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought they would be earlier than this.’

‘A policeman gets used to standing around,’ Loiseau answered. He moved back across the cobbles and scrubby grass, stepping carefully over the rusty railway lines and around the shapeless debris and abandoned cables. When I was sure he was out of sight I walked back along the quai. Below me the sea made soft noises like a bathful of serpents, and the joints of four ancient fishing boats creaked. I walked over to Kuang. ‘He’s late,’ I said. Kuang said nothing. Behind him, farther along the quai, a freighter was being loaded by a huge travelling crane. Light spilled across the waterfront from the spotlights on the cranes. Could their man have caught sight of Loiseau and been frightened away? It was fifteen minutes later than rendezvous. The standard control procedure was to wait only four minutes, then come back twenty-four hours later; but I hung on. Control procedures were invented by diligent men in clean shirts and warm offices. I stayed. Kuang seemed to notice the passage of time – or more accurately perhaps he revelled in it. He stood patiently. He hadn’t stamped his feet, breathed into his hands or smoked a cigarette. When I neared him he didn’t raise a quizzical eyebrow, remark about the cold or even look at his watch. He stared across the water, glanced at me to be sure I was not about to speak again, and then resumed his pose.

‘We’ll give him ten more minutes,’ I said. Kuang looked at me. I walked back down the quayside.

The yellow headlight turned off the main road a trifle too fast and there was a crunch as the edge of an offside wing touched one of the oil drums piled outside the Fina station. The lights kept coming, main beams. Kuang was illuminated as bright as a snowman and there was only a couple of foot of space between him and the wire fence around the sand heap. Kuang leapt across the path of the car. His coat flapped across the headlight, momentarily eclipsing its beam. There was a scream as the brakes slammed on and the engine stalled. Suddenly it was quiet. The sea splashed greedily against the jetty. Kuang was sucking his thumb as I got down from the oil drum. It was an ambulance that had so nearly run us down.

Out of the ambulance stepped Maria.

‘What’s going on?’ I said.

‘I’m Major Chan,’ said Maria.

‘You are?’ Kuang said. He obviously didn’t believe her.

‘You’re Major Chan, case officer for Kuang here?’ I said.

‘For the purposes that we are all interested in, I am,’ she said.

‘What sort of answer is that?’ I asked.

‘Whatever sort of answer it is,’ said Maria, ‘it’s going to have to do.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘He’s all yours.’

‘I won’t go with her,’ said Kuang. ‘She tried to run me down. You saw her.’