The Harry Palmer Quartet. Len Deighton

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       10

      [Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) Once again you will need tact and discretion, but persistence and hard work will bear fruit in the long run. An old friend will smooth out a difficulty.]

      Dalby seconded Carswell to work with me. I got him a little private office just big enough for him and the sergeant – Murray – to work in, a promotion to temporary Major and a suit that fitted him. I took him round to my tailor and we decided that a dull grey-green soft tweed, with dark brown waistcoat, gave him the country squire look right for an unemployed officer. Sgt Murray went for a check jacket with grey flannels. They worked each day diligently from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M., then returned to their wives in Fulham and Bromley. I had my own work to do but I dropped into Carswell now and again. By now he was concentrating on the S.1’s (S.2’s being too numerous and g-k’s (cabinet ministers, etc) being too few to get conclusive results from. Carswell was a statistician but even to him it was evident that unless other common factors could be found the concentrations were meaningless. Carswell and Murray turned up common factors like owning two cars, long holidays, visits to America, holidays in North Africa, etc, but then, of course, these things were bound to form patterns in a group where age-groups, income and education were markedly similar. Other behaviour patterns were less easy to explain. Among the groups concentrating at one place (which Carswell called the ‘concens’), among the ‘concens’ there was an above-average number who had been members of a political or quasi-political group, all but one having Right-wing aims. I asked Carswell to write a description of a concen and a description of an S.1 from the figures he had.

      Quite a few had had a serious illness within the last five years, many being fevers, none of the concens were left-handed, they had a great number of bachelors, and a slightly greater number of decorations for valour. Public schools and divorced parents were absolutely at average level. I wrote all this down on a sheet of 10in by 8in writing paper and pinned it above my table. I was still looking at it when Dalby came in. He was affecting a silver-topped umbrella of late. He followed his usual debating tactics, waving a sheet of paper covered with my writing.

      ‘Look here – I’ll be damned if I’m passing this. Damned if I will.’ Dalby moved one half-eaten egg and anchovy sandwich, toasted. A speciality of Wally’s delicatessen downstairs in Charlotte Street. He then moved the SARS to SORC volume of the Britannica and Barnes’ History of the Regiments, a Leica 3 with the 13.5 cm and a bottle of Carbon Tetrachloride, and was able to sit down on the desk. He waved the sheet of paper under my nose, still cursing away. He read, ‘Eight poplin shirts, white, for Sgt Murray; two dozen Irish linen handkerchiefs for Major Carswell; four pairs of hand-stitched hide shoes, including cost of last.’

      ‘Cost of last,’ said Dalby again. ‘What’s that mean?’

      ‘Last,’ I said. ‘Last – what the cobbler threw at his wife, you know.’

      Dalby continued reading from my expense account for the month. ‘Then this item: “To entertainment, drinks and dinner: Mirabelle Restaurant twenty-three pounds.” What is this, you, Chico, Carswell and Murray at the –’ he paused, and mouthed the words incredulously and slowly, ‘– Mirabelle Restaurant!! You’re supposed to spend £103 per month. This lot comes to £191 18s 6d. How’s that?’

      It seemed he expected an answer. ‘I’m keeping a few items over till next month,’ I said.

      That went down like a lead balloon. Dalby had stopped joking now, he began looking really annoyed, he scratched the side of his face nervously and kept waving my expense sheet so that it made crackling noises in the air.

      ‘Ross said you were an impertinent—. You’ll impertinent your way right out of here before long. You’ll see.’ His rage had gone suddenly, but it seemed a shame to leave it like that.

      ‘In all those expensive clothes,’ I asked plaintively, ‘do you expect us to eat in a Wimpy Bar?’ Dalby rolled with the punch, he didn’t even know what a Wimpy Bar was; he just couldn’t bear the thought of a sergeant brushing waiters with him at the Mirabelle. That’s why I continually did it, and why I itemized it in the most unequivocal way I knew. Dalby at this stage executed a famous military manoeuvre known as the ‘War Office two-step’, generally used for withdrawing intact when out-ranked. He started explaining that there was no need for Carswell and Murray to buy things off my expense sheet. Carswell can have his own. I didn’t particularly want Murray to have an expense sheet but I was interested to see whether I could angle Dalby into having to give him one.

      ‘Accounts will never in a million years let you give a sergeant with less than two years’ provisional service a sheet of money.’

      I followed up, ‘You know that’s the sort of thing they are dead fussy about; – no, you might get away with giving him free use of Carswell’s petty cash, but what they says goes when it comes to money sheets.’

      Dalby sat there with a sardonic look clamped across his head like a pair of earphones. ‘When you have quite finished, for reasons known only to yourself, getting Sergeant Murray an expense sheet, let me say that I have considered the matter carefully and both of them can have one.’ Dalby leaned back and put his suède ankle boots on the back of the only comfortable chair in the office. He picked up the two books that lay on the top of the old brief-case that I intended to lose and replace from СКАЧАТЬ