A Perfect Spy

She sat at Brotherhood’s side and he was holding her wrist the way the doctor held it when she was about to bear her little coward. To reassure her. To steady her. To say “I am in charge here.” The car was parked in a side street and behind them stood the police van and behind the police van stood a caravan of about six hundred parked police cars and radio vans and ambulances and bomb lorries, all occupied by Sam’s familiars who spoke soundlessly to one another without moving their eyes. Beside her was a shop called Sugar Novelties with a neon-lit window and a plastic gnome pushing a wheelbarrow laden with dusty sweets, and next to it a granite workhouse with “Public Library” engraved over a funereal door. Across the street stood a hideous Baptist church that told you God was no fun either. Beyond the church lay God’s square and His bandstand and His monkey-puzzle trees, and between the fourth and fifth tree from the left, as she had counted twenty times, and three-quarters of the way up, hung an arched lighted window with the orange curtains drawn, which my officers advise me is where your husband’s room is situated, madam, though our enquiries indicate that he is known locally by the name of Canterbury and is well liked in the community.

“He’s always liked,” Mary snapped.

But the superintendent was saying this to Brotherhood. He was speaking through Brotherhood’s window and deferring to Brotherhood as her keeper. And Mary knew that the superintendent had been ordered to speak to her as little as possible, which came hard to him. And that Brotherhood had given himself the job of answering for her, which the superintendent seemed to accept was as near to godliness as he was likely to get without having his ears blasted off. The superintendent was a Devon man, and ponderously traditional. I’m so frightfully glad he’s being arrested by a Devon man, she thought cruelly, in Caroline Lumsden’s Sloane-Ranger twitter. I always think it’s so much nicer to be taken prisoner by a man of the soil.

“Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like to come into the Church Hall, madam?” the superintendent was saying for the hundredth time. “It’s much warmer in the Church Hall and there’s some quite fine company. Cosmopolitan, counting the Americans.”

“She’s best here,” Brotherhood murmured in reply.

“Only we can’t allow the gentleman to switch on the engine, you see, to be truthful, madam. And if he can’t switch on the engine, well you can’t have the heating, if you see what I mean.”

“I’d like you to go away,” Mary said.

“She’s all right as she is,” said Brotherhood.

“Only it could be all night, you see, madam. Could be all tomorrow too. If our friend decides to stick it out, kind of thing, to be truthful.”

“We’ll play it as it comes,” Brotherhood said. “When you need her, this is where she’ll be.”

“Well I’m afraid she won’t, sir, to be truthful, not when we go in, if we have to. I’m afraid she’ll have to withdraw to a somewhat safer position, to be truthful, same as you. Only the rest of them are back in the Church Hall, if you follow me, sir, and the chief constable says that’s where all non-combatants have got to be at that stage in the proceedings, including the Americans.”

“She doesn’t want to be with the rest of them,” said Mary before Brotherhood could speak. “And she’s not American. She’s his wife.”

The superintendent went away and came back almost immediately. He’s the go-between. They’ve chosen him for his bedside manner.

“Message from the roof, sir,” he began apologetically, crouching yet again to Brotherhood’s window. “Do you happen to know, please, the precise type and calibre of the weapon our friend is alleged to have in his possession?”

“Standard Browning three-eight automatic. An old one. Shouldn’t think it’s been cleaned for years.”

“Any theories regarding the type of ammunition at all, sir? Only it would be nice for them to know the carry, you see.”

“Short nose, I should think.”

“But not a stopper, for instance, or a dumdum?”

“Why the hell should he want a dumdum?”

“I don’t know, sir, do I? Information is gold dust on this one, the way it’s being passed around, if I may say so. I haven’t seen so many tight lips in one room for, oh, a long time. How many rounds has our friend got, do you think?”

“One magazine. Maybe a spare.”

Mary was suddenly furious. “For God’s sake. He’s not a maniac! He’s not going to start a—”

“Start a what?” said the superintendent, whose country manners had a way of slipping when he wasn’t spoken to respectfully.

“Just assume it’s one magazine and one spare,” Brotherhood said.

“Well, then, perhaps you can tell us how our friend’s marksmanship is,” the superintendent suggested as if stepping on to safer ground. “You can’t blame them for asking that, can you?”

“He’s been trained and topped up all his life,” said Brotherhood.

“He’s good,” Mary said.

“Now how do you know that, madam, if I may be allowed to ask a simple question?”

“He shoots Tom’s air pistol with him.”

“Rats and that? Or something larger?”